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Mr.C
Problem Child
Joined: 15 Jan 2008
Posts: 615
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 Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:07 pm Post subject: A Cooper Classic Interview + interesting article |
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Three things I learned from Barry Cooper: 1. If you’re going to carry pot in your car, also bring your cat to freak out the drug dogs. 2. It takes balls to go on Fox News and talk about drug reform. 3. The word “marijuana” sounds a lot more interesting with a Southern accident.
Barry Cooper spent eight years of his life as a cop, busting people for drug possession and teaching other cops to do the same. Now he teaches stoners how to avoid arrest with his Never Get Busted Again DVDs. He’s unabashedly self-promotional, but his true story gives us a fascinating look inside the cloistered world of drug enforcement and shows that, just because you spend years of your life on one side of a battle, it’s never too late to change your mind.
You’re responsible for hundreds of arrests. Who were you were busting?
Go to your local grocery store and watch all the people. Those are who I busted. Ordinary, normal, everyday citizens. My typical arrest was a marijuana smoker driving down the road.
How did you bust them?
One technique I invented and taught other officers was to place a yard dog at the exit of a bus and say that if any person carried drugs off the bus, the dog would bark. Of course, the dog was not trained to detect drugs, but this made passengers leave their drugs on the bus.
I would then instruct them to remove their luggage from the overhead rack and place it in their seat before exiting, so the dog could take a sniff. With five cops and myself standing around, drug couriers would leave the drug suitcases on the top shelf. I would then search the bags left on the top shelf and find drugs in every one.
I made over 100 seizures this way. I never had to use a real drug dog and I never had to interview anyone to find their stash.
Now, looking back, how do you feel about all those busts?
I still get teary-eyed when thinking of the 5-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter crying as I escorted their mother and father away to jail during a marijuana search warrant. I orphaned those children. I caused much more trauma and harm on that family then marijuana could ever have caused them.
I am proud that I overwhelmed my field, but sad I ruined those lives. I should have researched the facts for myself and not listened solely to my teachers. I am sad about that.
Later in your career, you taught other cops how to be better busters. What were those students like?
They were not the brightest crayons in the box. Even as a cop, I noticed the ignorance levels of other officers. The pay is so little, the more intelligent ones leave once they figure out how to make a living doing something else. I’m not picking on them, but it’s true – they just aren’t that bright.
You got in trouble for busting some high-profile people (the mayor’s son, a city councilman). Is there an unspoken rule about certain people being off-limits?
There used to be. Now those people seem to be trophies for cops. The old standard was to protect the businessmen and politicians in the community. Now, these people are targets of law enforcement. My goodness, we put Martha Stewart in jail!
Now that no person is safe from arrest, more awareness is being brought to the problems with our criminal justice system. When it was just the black people getting arrested, nothing was said. Now that white America is watching their sons and daughters go to prison, the issue is being raised across the country.
So are you for legalization of all drugs or just pot?
I am totally against prohibition. It does not work. If a person wants to use meth until every tooth rots in their head, they should have the right to be miserable. If that person ever crosses the line and harms another, then arrest them for the assault, or rape or murder. We already have laws in place to protect us without unjustified drug laws.
Now you’re producing the Never Get Busted Again DVDs, helping people to avoid getting busted themselves. Is this a “fuck you” to the system that ousted you?
It is standing up and doing the right thing more than anything. My mother used to tell me, “It doesn’t matter if 5,000 people are wrong and against you, stand up and be heard.” This is very simple to do but rarely seen in today’s time. If standing up for what is right means I have to say “fuck you” to the system, then so be it. It would be unpatriotic to do anything else.
My work is also a political stance against the war on drugs. It is clear the courts are doing nothing to protect us from unreasonable arrests and searches, so I am teaching Americans how to subvert their efforts and stay out of jail.
I’m running for Congress, by the way.
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British Columbia
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It's a war that can't be won and even those who have been charged with cracking down on users agree there are better ways to deal with the issue
Barry Cooper's new DVD, Never Get Busted Again, which went on sale over the Internet late last month, will probably not sell very well outside the United States, because in most other countries the possession of marijuana for personal use is treated as a misdemeanour or simply ignored by the police.
But it will sell very well in the U.S., where many thousands of casual marijuana users are hit with savage jail terms every year in a nationwide game of Russian roulette in which most people indulge their habit unharmed while a few unfortunates have their lives ruined.
Barry Cooper is a former Texas policeman who made over 800 drug arrests as an anti-narcotics officer, but he has now repented: "When I was raiding homes and destroying families, my conscience was telling me it was wrong, but my need for power, fame and peer acceptance overshadowed my good conscience." Of course, Cooper's DVD, which teaches people how to avoid arrest for marijuana possession, will also bring him fame, plus a lot of money, but at least it won't hurt people.
However, Cooper lacks the courage of his own convictions. He argues that the war on drugs is futile and counter-productive so far as marijuana is concerned, but nervously insists that he is offering no tips that would help dealers of cocaine or methamphetamines to escape "justice." It's as if reformers fighting against America's alcohol prohibition laws in the 1920s had advocated re-legalizing beer but wanted to continue locking up drinkers of wine or spirits.
But there are bolder policemen around, who are willing to say flatly and publicly that all drug prohibition is wrong.
One is Jack Cole, 26 years with the New Jersey police, whose organization, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition ( LEAP ), is supported by growing numbers of serving policemen who have lost faith in the "War on Drugs" and want to make peace. "Leap wants to end drug prohibition just as we ended alcohol prohibition in 1933," says Cole, who argues that neither kind of prohibition has ever had any success in curbing consumption of the banned substances, but that each has fuelled the growth of a vast criminal empire.
It is policemen who take the lead in these issues because they are the ones who must deal with the calamitous consequences of the "War on Drugs." No doubt the use of "recreational" drugs does a lot of harm, as does the use of alcohol or tobacco, but that harm is dwarfed by the amount of crime and human devastation caused by 40 years of "war" on drug-users.
Howard Roberts, the deputy chief constable of the Nottinghamshire police, was the latest senior policeman to make the case for ending the war, pointing out last November that heroin addicts in Britain each commit, on average, 432 robberies, assaults and burglaries a year to raise the money for their illegal habit.
Each addict steals about $90,000 of property a year, whereas the cost of providing them with heroin on prescription from the National Health Service in closely supervised treatment programs would be only $24,000 a year.
So the NHS should provide heroin to addicts on prescription, said Roberts, like it used to in the 1950s and 1960s, before Britain was pressured into adopting the "war on drugs" model by the U.S. ( Since then, the number of heroin addicts in Britain has risen several hundredfold. ) Days later, it emerged that the NHS is actually experimenting with a return to that policy at three places in Britain - - and Switzerland has actually been prescribing heroin to addicts on a nationwide basis for some years now, with very encouraging results: crime rate down, addict death rate sharply down.
If every country adopted such a policy, legalizing all drugs and making the so-called "hard" ones available to addicts free, but only on prescription, the result would not just be improved health for drug users and a lower rate of petty crime, but the collapse of the criminal empires that have been built on the international trade in illegal drugs, which is now estimated to be worth $500 billion a year. That is exactly what happened to the criminal empires that were founded on bootlegging when alcohol prohibition was ended in the United States in 1933.
But what about the innocent children who will be exposed to these drugs if they become freely available throughout the society?
The answer is: nothing that doesn't happen to them now. There is no city and few rural areas in the developed world where you cannot buy any illegal drug known to man within half an hour, for an amount of money that can be raised by any enterprising 14-year-old.
Indeed, the supply of really nasty drugs would probably diminish if prohibition ended, because they are mainly a response to the level of risk the dealers must face. ( Economist Milton Friedman called it the Iron Law of Prohibition: the harder the police crack down on a substance, the more concentrated that substance becomes - so cocaine gives way to crack cocaine, as beer gave way to moonshine under alcohol prohibition. )
This is probably yet another false dawn, for even the politicians who know what needs to be done are too afraid of the gutter media to act on their convictions. But sometime in the next 50 years, after only few more tens of millions of needless deaths, drug prohibition will end.
http://www.crimecasefiles.com |
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Audio
Antiprohibitionist
Joined: 26 Aug 2008
Posts: 80
Location: Da 'Ville, TX
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:53 pm Post subject: |
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| I think that the hardest thing for me to understand is how people can read information like this (referring to the article speaking of prohibition) and not see how this failing drug war could be turned around to allow a greater standard of living in this country. The eventual downfall of organized crime, the lower rates of petty crime and even the opportunity for the government to tax "lesser" drugs in the same way they do tobacco and alcohol to improve the economy are such great steps forward. The money that is spent on this drug war ($33 billion so far this year according to drugsense.org!) could be much more effective if utilized in other ways, such as education for example. Not to mention the money that is used for prisons to house the 1.2 million people whose lives are effected by this. I guess this is just one more thing to add to the "Doesn't Quite Make Sense" list that I have going. I am just thankful that I have found a community of others that share similar beliefs and aren't walking around with blinders on. |
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Mr.C
Problem Child
Joined: 15 Jan 2008
Posts: 615
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| Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 3:41 pm Post subject: Re: A Cooper Classic Interview + interesting article |
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| Mr.C wrote: |
However, Cooper lacks the courage of his own convictions. He argues that the war on drugs is futile and counter-productive so far as marijuana is concerned, but nervously insists that he is offering no tips that would help dealers of cocaine or methamphetamines to escape "justice." It's as if reformers fighting against America's alcohol prohibition laws in the 1920s had advocated re-legalizing beer but wanted to continue locking up drinkers of wine or spirits.
But there are bolder policemen around, who are willing to say flatly and publicly that all drug prohibition is wrong.
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seems this author was a little confused,,as far as i know Barry has always said he was anti prohibition and even states that in the interview above.
seems to me the author was looking for a transition into LEAP,,and chose a bad one.
am i missin something??? set me straight here
you know i think the kneejerk reaction of many people who hear anyone advocating the lagalization of all drugs is to say ohh hell no
but it is hard to argue that it is easier on a family to get someone into rehab then it is sending swat teams in with flash grenades. |
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shortyflow
M.I.A.M.I
Joined: 24 Apr 2008
Posts: 587
Location: Porter Pot in Brazil
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| Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:23 pm Post subject: |
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i loved the article from british columbia. who was the author?
Also Why hasn't britian went back to a different policey about drugs yet? They are our closest friends. The U.S would prolly end up following them. |
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