Police Officer Gets Four Years In Prison For Shooting Unarmed Black Man. But The Main Culprits Go Unpunished.

This tragic story from New Orleans is unusual not because a cop shot a young Black man to death – that happens with depressing regularity – but because the cop is in prison for the shooting.

On March 7 of last year, Colclough was among a group of officers who raided [Natasha Allen’s] home on Prentiss Street in Gentilly, looking for evidence of drug dealing.

As they marched up the stairs, 20-year-old Wendell Allen appeared at the top of the staircase. He was shirtless, wearing only pants and a pair of sneakers.

He had nothing in his hands, Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro said Friday. He was unarmed.

But Colclough fired his weapon once. The bullet tore through Allen’s chest, into his heart and his lungs. He fell on the landing and died within seconds.

I wonder why Colclough didn’t say the magic words – “I thought he was reaching for a gun in his waistband” – to get out of being punished. The other police officers were behind him on the stairs, and therefore had obscured views. It would have created reasonable doubt.

Two possibilities occur to me. First, Colclough may have known that the raid was being recorded by a pinhole camera, and been afraid of lying for fear of being contradicted by the video. Although the video doesn’t show Allen before the shooting, Colclough may not have known that at the time he gave his statement.

Secondly, Colclough may be too honest and honorable a person to lie. The article certainly makes him seem like a good man – one that even the victim’s mother forgave after meeting with him.

Don’t get me wrong – I mainly feel sorry for Wendell Allen and his family. Wendell Allen took care of his many younger siblings and was the first in his family to attend college. He sounds like a great guy who worked hard to make something of himself, and now he’s dead at a ludicrously young age and won’t get the chance.

But there’s something unsatisfying about Colclough being the only person punished for this tragedy, because this wasn’t only Colclough’s fault. If it wasn’t Colclough shooting Allen, it would have been a different cop shooting a different civilian. Because our current policies make tragedies like this inevitable.

Radley Balko writes:

Let’s be clear here. Throwing cops in jail for making split-second mistakes under unimaginably perilous circumstances isn’t going to prevent future Wendell Allens. The problem is that bad policy keeps creating those unimaginably perilous circumstances in the first place. Over 100 times per day in America, police officers break into private homes to serve search warrants for consensual, nonviolent crimes. They aren’t preventing violence, they’re creating it. They aren’t saving lives, they’re putting lives at risk.

Until that stops, there will be more bodies.

A police raid like the one that took Wendell Allen’s life should be a very last resort, used rarely, and only in cases where the stakes are high enough to justify risking lives. It wasn’t worth risking the lives of anyone – not the cops, not the people raided – for a shot at arresting an alleged pot dealer. If someone offered to increase the amount of pot in New Orleans by a thousandfold or ten thousandfold or a thousand thousandfold, and in return Wendell Allen would be alive, I’d take that deal in a second, and so would anyone with any sense of proportion.

But while Josh Colclough, who says he has wept for Wendell Allen every day since the shooting, sits in prison, and while Wendell Allen lies dead, the people who decided to invade the Allen home with a door-smashing raid are not dead or in prison. The higher-ups in the police department who decide on priorities and tactics will not be punished at all. The politicians who have made careers out of anti-drug hysteria will not be punished at all.

It’s good Colclough was held responsible. It’s appalling that he’s the only one.

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32 Responses to Police Officer Gets Four Years In Prison For Shooting Unarmed Black Man. But The Main Culprits Go Unpunished.

  1. 1
    RonF says:

    You will find a great many conservatives who want to see the militarization of police forces, “no knock” warrants, and the mindset on the part of such police forces as you cite here reversed. It’s a threat to liberty and our Constitutional rights.

  2. 2
    Jake Squid says:

    In my experience it is the conservatives in my community who make such policies possible. There may be a great many conservatives against the militarization of the police, but that isn’t nearly enough of them to overcome what has been put in place.

  3. 3
    Robert says:

    It is statists, right or left, who believe in the ability of government to make sweeping changes in the behavior of the citizenry through force and threat of force. Right statists are probably more to blame for the specific idiocies of the idiotic drug war; left statists are more to blame for the persistence of idiotic optimism that the state can make people want what the state wants them to want.

    If you aren’t solidly of the opinion that the state should fuck off and leave people to live their own lives, for the most part, then there is no need to worry about who is more to blame for the specific evils of which specific policy; you are to blame for all of it, broadly and in a nicely shared democratic fashion. (Us hyperlibertarians have our own set of things to take blame for, but this shit isn’t part of it.)

  4. 4
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Wendell Allen shouldn’t be dead. The cop entered a plea of guilty: there’s no need to analyze his culpability as a result, so he should be in jail. The cops should not, generally, be using no knock warrants in most cases. But it’s not clear that this particular issue was a procedural failure rather than an individual fuckup.

    Facts first:

    HERE is the actual search warrant.
    HERE is an article which talks about the warrant and how it was served. To pull a few quotes out:

    The warrant states that Jefferson Parish Sgt. John Pacaccio and NOPD Officer Michael Voltolina watched the house for a 48-hour period and saw several “hand-to-hand” drug transactions in the driveway. On Wednesday, the officers allegedly spotted Deemer leave the home carrying a white package. They stopped the pick-up truck… and shortly later recovered a one-pound package of marijuana inside the truck.

    If you leave a house with a one-pound brick of pot, your house is getting searched. And reasonably so.*

    The search commenced shortly afterward, about 5:40 p.m. Wednesday, just before dusk. Four JPSO deputies formed a perimeter in the back of the house, police said. Three NOPD officers lined the front of the building. Meanwhile, an NOPD sergeant and five other NOPD officers went to the front door, according to Serpas.
    They were in plainclothes but wore “raid jackets” identifying themselves as police officers, Serpas said.

    This behavior is not actually what people refer to as the “militarization” of the police. Military in context these days is usually referring to the tendency of some departments to use SWAT teams, assault vans, assault rifles, and full battle dress. This doesn’t seem to have been a militarized raid.

    “Before they entered the residence, officers announced their presence and announced their intention to serve a search warrant,” Serpas said. “Receiving no answer, they had to break the door.”

    That’s what is called a “knock and announce.” It sounds good, but I suspect it’s not all that true. In a drug warrant, many cops would much rather break a door (it’s often safer for them, although more dangerous for anyone else, and it tends to preserve evidence, thus retroactively justifying the warrant.) But also FYI, rams aren’t especially “military” either; cops have been using them for decades if not centuries.

    Radley Balko says, and you approvingly quote:
    Over 100 times per day in America, police officers break into private homes to serve search warrants for consensual, nonviolent crimes. They aren’t preventing violence, they’re creating it. They aren’t saving lives, they’re putting lives at risk.

    Is he talking about this case? Unlike drug possession, drug dealing is a crime which is often linked to violence; which is rarely limited to pot; and which causes all sorts of problems. It’s low on the “big nasty crime” scale but it is a real stretch to describe drug dealing as a “consensual nonviolent” offense as a general term. (Sure, there are some friendly nonviolent dealers just like there are some hyper-aggressive violent users. I’m talking generalities.)

    So if you want to choose a bully pulpit for “how dare they even serve the search warrant” then, unless you are generally arguing against targeting drug dealers with warrants at all, you might want to use one of the other far-worse examples of police fuckups: you know, where they enter the wrong house (because they don’t check the address;) or give the occupants heart attacks; or shoot, beat or tase the witnesses for saying things like “who are you?;” or refuse to identify themselves and then arrest/shoot people for disobeying a police officer; or use military tactics for CIVIL cases, and so on.

    * if Wendell Allen hadn’t had any pot, or he had had a relatively small amount (which he did, I think, along with some scales;) or if he had had a lot; or if he had also had pills or coke or crystal meth: nothing would change about the analysis. You have to decide whether you it’s reasonable for police to go into the house BEFORE you know whether or not there’s anything in there. Do you think that a search warrant for a house where someone has walked out with a pound of pot is unreasonable?

  5. 5
    Jake Squid says:

    Do you think that a search warrant for a house where someone has walked out with a pound of pot is unreasonable?

    Yes, I do think that’s unreasonable. But then I’m in the legalize-all-drugs camp.

  6. 6
    Jake Squid says:

    This behavior is not actually what people refer to as the “militarization” of the police.

    Yeah, you’re definitely right about that. There’s a difference between militarization (which we commonly see at protest rallies) and aggressive or violent policing.

  7. 7
    Eytan Zweig says:

    If you aren’t solidly of the opinion that the state should fuck off and leave people to live their own lives, for the most part, then there is no need to worry about who is more to blame for the specific evils of which specific policy; you are to blame for all of it, broadly and in a nicely shared democratic fashion.

    That is nonsense, plain and simple. The fact that my political views share a fundamental property with people who believe in militarized police does not make me responsible for the outcomes of their policies, when those policies are based on the points of divergance between us.

  8. 8
    Robert says:

    The implementation of those policies, Eytan, is contingent on a majoritarian support for strong-state action. You support strong-state action; you are accordingly responsible, in some measure, for the abuses of that system.

    I favor capital punishment. My state has a capital punishment regime which is sloppily run and kills lots of innocents. Am I among those to blame, even though I don’t endorse the “let’s run this half-assed” part of the state’s approach? Hell, yes.

    You do not get to vote for the Enabling Act, and then present yourself as an ardent anti-Fascist with a defense of “but I didn’t want the dictator to do THAT.”

  9. 9
    alex says:

    drug dealing is a crime which is often linked to violence; which is rarely limited to pot; and which causes all sorts of problems. It’s low on the “big nasty crime” scale but it is a real stretch to describe drug dealing as a “consensual nonviolent” offense as a general term.

    Thank you for this. I appreciate legalisation would be a good idea. But the people who currently run the drug trade are genuinely evil and genuinely deserve persecuting. It is just vile to use the fact that in another scenario the drug trade would do less harm to excuse the enormous evil that those currently involved in it do.

  10. 10
    Robert says:

    Alex –

    Drug distribution is a business, in most ways like any other distribution-of-products business. Drug dealers = Sears Roebuck.

    There is not something intrinsically evil to drug selling that causes drug businesses to do harm (and I do acknowledge, they do great harm). Rather, the nature of the legal structure surrounding the industry creates and enforces the incentives that the people in the business – for all businesses are just collections of people – respond to. This in turn is reflected in the life and career choices of the employees and owners of the businesses.

    A person who thinks that violent reprisal is an excellent choice of tactics in most scenarios, and who has no moral objection to casualties among bystanders, for example, has a choice between going to work for Sears as a washing machine salesman, or for the local drug gang as a courier. At Sears, the first customer who screws him out of a sale gets a beating and the salesman is fired or jailed; at Frank’s Discount Drug Deli, the first customer who shorts him gets a beating, and the other customers of the gang become a little more rigorous about having proper cash on hand when they buy, and our courier gets an ‘attaboy’ from his neighborhood captain.

    It isn’t that drugs make people violent (though they can) or that washing machine salesmen are particularly moral (they are not); it is that in the legal industry, illicit tactics and techniques are punished while in illegal industries, illicit tactics are punished or rewarded depending on whether they work or not. If washing machines were illegal to buy and sell, such that companies had no legal recourse against deadbeat customers, washing machine salesmen would be sketchy crooks like meth dealers are today.

  11. 11
    Eytan Zweig says:

    First of all, “Strong state” is not a single issue. I generally support very strong state regulation and intervention into the actions of organisations (such as corporations, small businesses, labor unions, and others), but I do not generally support strong state intervention and regulation into the actions of individuals. Lumping both together, as you do, is not representative of many people’s beliefs.

    Secondly, it is true that I support policies that are prerequisites for other policies I do not support. But that doesn’t make me responsible for them. I also believe, for example, that the government should fund its activities and actions via taxation. That does not mean that I bear partial responsibility if a particular government implements an unfair tax. The US constitution enables almost every law that has been passed in your country. That does not mean that if you support the constitution you are accountable for every one of those laws.

    So, no. I do not accept your premise that because two things fall under the “big state” label, then automatically someone who supports one thing is responsible for the other.

    Now, all that said, to return to the particular tragic case Amp posted about, I think that I simply do not know enough about this particular case to say whether the point where this diverged from what I would desire was at the level of legislation, or at the level of implementation of that legislation, or at the level of an individual policeman’s unfortunate error in judgment. So I’m not absolving myself of general responsibility for supporting this situation, because I cannot say for a fact that I did not. But to the degree that I am responsible, it’s because of far more granular beliefs of mine than the fact that I believe in a strong state.

  12. 12
    Eytan Zweig says:

    The above was a response to Robert @8, in case that wasn’t not clear.

  13. 13
    Grace Annam says:

    Robert:

    Drug dealers = Sears Roebuck.

    No.

    There is a qualitative difference between a business built around supplying various retail goods and a business dependent upon supplying addicts. Addictive behavior is qualitatively different from healthy, daily behavior.

    Sure, statistically, people tend to respond to incentives. Sure, participants in the drug trade respond to incentives. Economics, yes, yes. The difference here is not in the dealers. It is in the addicts, who have that addiction riding them, whispering in their ear, punishing with pain, rewarding with pleasure.

    I can argue for or against legalization of drugs (and I have), and I can explain why some drugs are “better” than others (and I have), and I can point out that some illegal drugs are more benign than some legal drugs (and I have).

    None of those arguments depended on lumping together, say, apples, crude oil, and snake venom and happily declaring them all to be “organic!” Not all business is just “yay, business!” and not all drugs are just “yay, totally optional harmless recreation!”

    The last drug dealer I arrested had blood in a spray-pattern on her forearm and down her leg, because when she last shot up she hit the artery poorly and it spurted. She was going to clean up this hazmat, she told me, but first she had to make her appointment to sell some heroin in the parking lot of a local grocery store. I first met her around a decade ago, when she was a teenager with a promising college plan, about a month after her boyfriend got her hooked on heroin. She came to my attention back then because she started forging checks in order to get drug money. Those check forgeries, not her actual drug use, are what earned her her first stint in prison.

    I’m not a drug-warrior purist by any means. The War on Drugs is a debacle. The collateral damage is more extensive than we know. There are good arguments that some drugs can be sold legally and responsibly. (Though, as we know from the history of alcohol, “can be” doesn’t mean “will be” or even “are, on balance”.) I’m all for harm-reduction, and what works. I think needle exchange programs are better than no needle exchange programs. I don’t look for traffic offenses near the local rehab clinic, even though I could get lots of arrests there, because I don’t want to provide a disincentive to addicts seeking treatment.

    But all of that can be true without characterizing drug dealers as entrepreneurs and equating them to successful international retail chains.

    Purveyors of lethally addictive drugs of unknown source and unknown quality are a scourge, not because they are intrinsically evil, but because of the consequences of their activity, because of the collateral damage. And if you’re going to apply a business model (incentives, yes, fine), it should be a very different business model, because addicts behave differently, and drive the business differently, and those behaviors have to be countered differently.

    I’m no great fan of business for its own sake, either; there’s far too much business going on where the businesses get to pass real costs onto people who didn’t benefit in any way. But avoiding consequences, a standard practice in all forms of business, is not the same as leveraging addictive behavior. The addictive behavior, layered on top, makes the whole model dance to a different tune.

    Grace

  14. 14
    Jake Squid says:

    Grace,

    I’m wondering how the tobacco industry fits into your theory of addiction’s effects on business models.

  15. 15
    Grace Annam says:

    Why, it fits in just fine, Jake. Just fine.

    Grace walks away, whistling…

    But, seriously, I don’t have many nice things to say about the tobacco industry or the liquor industry, either, even though I occasionally buy something to support the latter. Certainly the tobacco industry is a horrifying example of what some people will do and say when their paycheck depends on it.

    But, also, the tobacco industry is subject to harm reduction; it’s regulated, not banned (and as fetid as I consider tobacco use to be, I wouldn’t support a ban). People under 18 can’t legally possess it. You can’t use cartoon characters to sell it. You can’t sell it out of vending machines anymore. Every package has a warning label. All that. Therefore, for all the harm it’s done, we don’t see the kind of collateral damage we see in the heroin trade, for instance. In my career, I have yet to arrest someone who committed a crime to get tobacco (other than a crime relating directly to acquiring it). I’m not saying no one ever forged a check or pimped their children for a pack of cigs; I’m sure there are examples. But they’re on a different order of magnitude.

    Grace

  16. 16
    alex says:

    Grace. Enormous numbers of drugs are not remotely addictive. Claiming drugs and addictive and using heroin as you chosen example is – well it not quite ignorance and not quite lies – its a bit more poisonous misuse of a very small amount of knowledge.

  17. 17
    Grace Annam says:

    alex:

    Grace.

    Alex. Bubeleh.

    Enormous numbers of drugs are not remotely addictive.

    That’s true! It sure is a good thing that I didn’t claim that all drugs are addictive, isn’t it?

    Claiming drugs and addictive and using heroin as you chosen example is – well it not quite ignorance and not quite lies

    If I understand you correctly, I’m not allowed to talk about a subset of drugs, addictive drugs, without talking about ALL drugs? How limiting.

    If I understand you correctly, when Robert specifies “drug dealers”, I am not to envision purveyors of illegal drugs, a disproportionate number of which are addictive, but instead … pharmacists? Over-the-counter store clerks?

    It’s a good thing I didn’t allude to the fact that not all drugs are the same… oh, but wait, I did:

    Grace wrote:

    …and I can explain why some drugs are “better” than others (and I have), and I can point out that some illegal drugs are more benign than some legal drugs (and I have).

    It’s a good thing I didn’t specify that

    There are good arguments that some drugs can be sold legally and responsibly.

    …oh, but wait, I did.

    It’s a good thing I didn’t give any signs, any indications that I was talking specifically about addictive drugs… oh, but wait, I did:

    …a business dependent upon supplying addicts. Addictive behavior… The difference here is not in the dealers. It is in the addicts, who have that addiction riding them…Purveyors of lethally addictive drugs…addicts behave differently…The addictive behavior, layered on top, makes the whole model dance to a different tune.

    It’s a good thing I didn’t try to put any effort into nuance, or thoughtful prose, when instead I could have tossed off a three-line ad hominem strawman attack at Robert and called it done.

    Remember, folks, my post was not quite ignorance, and it wasn’t quite lies, so it’s totally okay for alex to charitably warn me that, gosh, I’m treading awfully close to ignorance and lies before I actually come right out and commit an Untruth.

    – its a bit more poisonous misuse of a very small amount of knowledge.

    Clearly, it couldn’t be more than a very small amount of knowledge, seeing as it’s an amount of knowledge which borders on (but isn’t quite!) ignorance. I am, after all, a bear of very little brain.

    alex, when you want to have a thoughtful discussion in good faith about something I actually said, feel free to reply again. Until then, sling your ad hominem elsewhere.

    Grace

  18. 18
    Jake Squid says:

    Thanks for the response, Grace. I don’t think I understand your position, though. You write,

    Therefore, for all the harm it’s done, we don’t see the kind of collateral damage we see in the heroin trade, for instance.

    , in relation to my question about tobacco. Do you not foresee a similar reduction in collateral damage from heroin, for example, if it were to be regulated in a manner similar to tobacco or alcohol?

    Or am I completely misunderstanding your comment and you were referring to inapplicability of business models only when compared to the illegal drug trade?

  19. 19
    Jake Squid says:

    I curse the lack of the edit function!

    Block quote should end after the word “instance” in my previous comment.

    [Fixed! –Amp, the human edit function.]

  20. 20
    Grace Annam says:

    Jake:

    Or am I completely misunderstanding your comment and you were referring to inapplicability of business models only when compared to the illegal drug trade?

    That’s where I was concentrating my ire, yes, on the illegal trade in addictive drugs. Given the discussion of illegal drugs, up-thread, and Robert’s talking about drug dealers and contrasting legal and illegal behaviors, I thought we were mainly talking about illegal drugs.

    Note, also, that I’m not saying that business principles are completely inapplicable to the illegal drug trade. Supply-and-demand still drives pricing, incentives will still change aggregate behavior, and so on. It’s just that those models, which often assume rational actors (even though it’s demonstrable that humans often don’t act rationally as the observers define the term), those models now must cope with the behavior of a population which acts even less rationally – addicts.

    Do you not foresee a similar reduction in collateral damage from heroin, for example, if it were to be regulated in a manner similar to tobacco or alcohol?

    I’m skeptical but willing to be convinced. Were I tasked with legalizing drugs in the least harmful manner possible, heroin is certainly not where I would start. There are significant differences between tobacco and heroin, such that I think it would be a mistake to map them one-for-one. For instance, heroin is much more expensive, and the necessary dosage goes up with time. I recently arrested someone who was taking fifty doses per day (at a per-dose cost-to-her of about $20), for a daily cost of about $1000. Most addicts hereabouts do something less than that, around 3-5 per day, sometimes higher, total cost to them of around $80-120 (less volume, less price break). Tobacco, on the other hand, even at 5 packs per day, costs only roughly $20/day. Also, you can use tobacco and continue to work while under its effects. The same is not true of heroin. So heroin is more expensive, and causes impairment, both of which will disrupt an addict’s ability to function, especially to work (for pay or parenting) in ways that tobacco doesn’t.

    No doubt the price would go down if production became legal and regulated; at the very least, you’d be cutting out some middle-men and some supply irregularities. To what extent? I have no idea.

    I have heard people say that nicotine is more powerfully addictive than heroin. Maybe in some sense, but the people trying to quit tobacco don’t exhibit the same fear I see in people who are bracing themselves to quit heroin, and people trying to quit tobacco seem to be able to wean themselves to a lower dose with less pain and effort than people weaning themselves off of heroin. However, I have no personal experience in either case, and that’s anecdotal and subject to sampling error, since I see a reasonable cross-section of smokers and chewers, but tend to see only the least functional heroin addicts.

    One problem I see with legalization generally is measuring impairment. Detecting impairment from alcohol during casual interaction in the field is difficult, but detecting impairment from drugs like marijuana and heroin is much more difficult, because the signs of minimal-but-actual impairment are subtler. (Note that I’m talking about impairment, here, such as can be measured by a battery of standardized tests, not incapacitation, such as can be observed when someone can’t see straight.) If you pace with water and electrolytes, you can get decently drunk in the evening and be quite functional for most jobs the following morning, with an actual BAC of 0.00%. The average body (and there is meaningful variation) metabolizes alcohol at about 0.015% per hour, so if you’re at 0.12% at 23:00, when you stop drinking, you could be at 0.00 when you get up for work at 07:00. With marijuana, you can appear bright-eyed and bushy-tailed twelve hours later and still test measurably impaired on standardized tests. The blood chemistry is much less well-understood, such that most jurisdictions don’t have numerical limits. Not sure what heroin’s metabolic tail-off looks like, in that regard; regular users often don’t tail off completely before the next dose, and once the main part of the high is past, casual interaction would not lead you to suspect impairment. You still might not want that worker on your factory floor or driving your company’s vehicles, though.

    And that impairment issue will be different for each and every drug, and we’re creating more all the time. I’m not offering this as a reason not to legalize; I’m offering this as a thing which must be dealt with, one way or another; either we get a handle on it or we accept the societal consequences of the impairment.

    So, there’s probably a longer answer than you wanted. Does that help clarify, at all?

    Grace

  21. 21
    alex says:

    If I understand you correctly, I’m not allowed to talk about a subset of drugs, addictive drugs, without talking about ALL drugs?

    Sure you can. Just make your first clear distinction a little sooner than your 9th paragraph next time. The majority of the illegal drugs trade is based around non-addictive drugs, jumping in with OMG addiction and your favourite heroin anecdotes is a misleading contribution. BTW Sears has a pharmacy and sells opiates, if you’re going to take a shot at Robert it should be for defaming ecstasy dealers.

  22. 22
    Jake Squid says:

    Thanks, Grace. That makes what you were saying perfectly understandable to me. My mistake was in interpreting Robert’s comment as what it would be like were drugs legal and yours as responding to that interpretation.

    As to legalization, there’s certainly many conversations to take place around that.

  23. 23
    Robert says:

    Grace is quite correct to draw a distinction around addictive substances as products; they are a category that deserves some additional discussion.

    But that discussion needs to come from a commonality on facts; Grace, you seem to be operating on your own set. And maybe it’s better than mine; you know more heroin addicts, I imagine. But let’s explore it a little?

    I didn’t use Sears Roebuck as a random company name; they used to sell drugs that became illegal, and when the drugs became illegal, they stopped selling them.

    Morphine and heroin, I am told, are functionally the same when it comes to addiction: they are both dreadfully easy to get hooked on and dreadfully hard to quit. Heroin, which has a high recreational potential, is readily available on illicit markets (i.e., handled by criminals) while morphine, which does not really have such a potential, is handled by medical clinics.

    There are significant numbers of addicts of both drugs. The social harm from heroin addiction is massive both in sum and per user. The social harm from morphine addiction is negligible, both in sum and per user.

    Grace – why?

  24. 24
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Not my thread, but why are we arguing about drug legalization instead of discussing the “breaking into houses” issue of the “shooting people” issue?

    But so long as we’re side tracking anyway:

    alex says:
    The majority of the illegal drugs trade is based around non-addictive drugs,

    Huh?
    coke and all cocain derivatives; many stimulants and “pep” pills; meth, and any of the opiates or their derivatives (heroin, oxy, etc.) are highly addictive. Pot isn’t in that category though even pot users can develop dependency (more common) or serious addiction (less common;) still, pot certainly isn’t the majority of the trade.

    What do you mean by that statement?

  25. 25
    Robert says:

    The pot market swamps those other drugs in scale from what I understand, G&W.

    I don’t mean to derail, I just don’t see any discussion about whether the cops should be busting into people’s houses and shooting kids. We’re all on the same page, commies and fascists alike: nope.

  26. 26
    Ben Lehman says:

    Grace, I just wanted to say thank you for your comments, they’re pretty informative (at least to me.) My experience with the drug trade has been entirely producer-end (I grew up in a pot-grower county) which has its own set of horrible problems. It’s interesting to hear about the other side of it.

    yrs–
    –Ben

  27. 27
    Grace Annam says:

    Ben, you’re very welcome. I’m glad it was helpful. Thanks for the attagal.

    Robert:

    Morphine and heroin, I am told, are functionally the same when it comes to addiction: they are both dreadfully easy to get hooked on and dreadfully hard to quit. Heroin, which has a high recreational potential, is readily available on illicit markets (i.e., handled by criminals) while morphine, which does not really have such a potential, is handled by medical clinics.

    There are significant numbers of addicts of both drugs. The social harm from heroin addiction is massive both in sum and per user. The social harm from morphine addiction is negligible, both in sum and per user.

    Grace – why?

    Morphine’s social harm is negligible by comparison, I agree.

    First, some caveats: I’m in the US, and I have not studied this in any systematic way. I’m getting my opinions from thinking about my own experiences, talking to addicts, and various educational snippets over the years, including half-remembered and sometimes-reminded chemistry. (A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, as alex points out, and of course very expert knowledge must be diluted with some common sense before you try to use it too many times.) And, I have not talked to thousands of addicts; I am not a drug cop. I just enforce drug laws when I come across violations and talk to addicts as a result, or talk to addicts other officers have arrested.

    Heroin and morphine are very similar: heroin is just morphine plus two acetyl groups. If memory serves, that makes heroin cross the blood-brain barrier more effectively. Also if memory serves, heroin metabolizes into morphine and other stuff. So a hit of heroin can be thought of as a hit of heroin with a chaser of morphine, which probably explains the different subjective experience for the user.

    Both heroin and morphine are very addictive, but I’m told by heroin addicts who have experienced both that heroin gives a substantially faster and higher high. I can’t recall, offhand, ever talking with a morphine addict who had tried both, which is suggestive, but may simply be two types of sampling bias: morphine addicts are more likely under direct medical supervision and not coming to my attention for their illegal acts, and morphine addicts tend to be older and sicker, and thus in populations less likely to offend anyway. Heroin addicts, by contrast, tend to be young, and initially healthy (though it speaks volumes that you don’t meet a lot of old heroin addicts), and to have gotten started when a “friend” gave them a hit. (Heaven save myself and everyone I love from such “friends”.)

    Because heroin is subjectively more potent (for its high), it is regarded as having a higher potential for abuse, which is why, in the US, it is completely illegal (classified as a Schedule I drug), while morphine is a prescription drug (Schedule II, in the US).

    Does that explain all of the difference? I don’t know. It might; sometimes small difference make for large tipping points. It might be that if there were no such thing as heroin, there would be a massive illegal trade in morphine. From a dealer’s perspective, why make morphine illegally when, with basically the same supplies and effort, you can make heroin and get more bang for the buck? If heroin did not exist, then perhaps the dealers would be cranking out morphine.

    You could make the argument that there is no massive problem with morphine simply because it is regulated rather than banned. I’m skeptical; I’d want to see comparison studies. (Personally, I think the bang-for-the-illegal-buck explanation is more likely.) There are places where both are Schedule I (Canada, I believe) and where both are prescription drugs (the UK). Obviously cross-country comparisons are difficult to do well; people routinely bollux them up when trying to argue in favor or against gun control, for instance. But since controlled trials would be unethical, we have to study the world we have, not the world we would create if we were mad social scientists.

    So, Robert, that’s my best guess, and we’re definitely running into the limits of my technical knowledge in this area. What do you think of the above?

    Grace

  28. 28
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Ah, morphine and heroin.

    I studied those extensively in undergrad and grad (neuropsych and psychopharm, among others)

    The basic simplified version: the dose/time/response curve for heroin is much steeper on the way up because the chemistry is different. That means both that you tend to have a slightly higher “high” (because the faster action means that it is easier to win the race against metabolism) and that you experience a much greater “rush” (because your brain changes more rapidly.) So the end is that you experience a greater high.

    The curve is also steeper on the way down. That means that you tend to have a harder, faster crash, which tends to increase cravings.

    That said, morphine is absolutely, definitely, addictive as hell. Both of them cause major changes in brain chemistry which create an addiction. There were lots of morphine addicts when morphine was around.

    Morphine is still better than heroin, though, especially for maintenance (though there are better drugs for that as well.) The lower slope of the morphine profile on the up and down sides makes it more possible to keep a relatively stable level in the brain.

  29. 29
    Robert says:

    If you need to tell us you were a junkie in your college days, G&W, it’s all right. We’re not going to judge you. ;)

    Thanks for the response, Grace, that was more or less what I was looking for. I’m not going to argue against you or G “China Train” W on the specific nuances of the drugs, but I think that the relatively diverse (and individually weak) explanatory factors for the difference in impact between the two substances is fairly telling.

    It’s more telling when tested against history. “These dozen differences explain why heroin is socially so much worse.” – yet a hundred years ago, when heroin and morphine were both legal, those dozen differences were still in effect but heroin wasn’t socially nearly as destructive.

    I don’t think that the legal status of a drug can explain *everything* about its negative social impacts, but I think that those who believe in the state’s power to change human behavior DRASTICALLY misunderestimate the iatrogenic effect of “illegal” status in and of itself. You took exception to my drug dealer = Sears comparison on the grounds that the drug dealers were selling addictive things – but back in the day when Sears sold heroin, heroin was just as addictive as it was today and yet the pathology was a tiny fraction.

    Whether something operates inside or outside the boundaries of the law makes an enormous impact on how the something operates within the society.

  30. 30
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Robert – I’m not entirely sure that your historical account is entirely correct – note that between 1914-1924 in the US, heroin and morphine were on equal footing, both legal only as persecription medication, but that, if wikipedia and its sources are to be believed, heroin addiction became a social problem by 1924, while morphine addiction was not – that is what led to the outright banning of heroin.

    I’m not saying the illegal status of heroin didn’t contribute to its subsequent development as a societal problem, but I think that your choice to dismiss other factors as “weak” while favoring illegality as the primary explanation is something you need to justify further.

  31. 31
    Radfem says:

    Interesting article. I have to admit it took me a while to get past an officer getting four years in prison for abuse of the color of authority/homicide. Still, Wendell Allen shot him, he’d be on death row right now if he’d survived it.

    It’s hard to know whether if he did it to lie or be honest and it’s too bad that it’s come to that. Remorse? Was it immediate or was it after he was convicted and sentenced? Remorse is not impossible certainly. I’ve seen cops “mourn” (meaning in other ways) shootings even those they were exonerated for, for years. I know cops that I see doing that who might not even be aware of it. I pushed for crisis mental health training in my city’s department and successfully so, but it’s been attempted to be undercut more than a few times. I say attempted because usually get tipped off by not only a cop but the cop who shot two mentally ill people in five months and whose second shooting led to a push for the CIT in the first place.

    Secondly, Colclough may be too honest and honorable a person to lie. The article certainly makes him seem like a good man – one that even the victim’s mother forgave after meeting with him.

    It’s always interest when cops get praised for doing what should be a tenet of their job. Maybe that’s just being jaded because for many people it seems that telling the truth is the exception not the rule.

    But while Josh Colclough, who says he has wept for Wendell Allen every day since the shooting, sits in prison, and while Wendell Allen lies dead, the people who decided to invade the Allen home with a door-smashing raid are not dead or in prison. The higher-ups in the police department who decide on priorities and tactics will not be punished at all. The politicians who have made careers out of anti-drug hysteria will not be punished at all.

    It’s good Colclough was held responsible. It’s appalling that he’s the only one.

    Often this is true, for a while, even a long while but it’s certainly not an absolute. But you’ve got to be tough and you’ve got to be consistent and you’ve got to arm yourself with the facts from whatever allies will provide them to you and you’d be amazed…well I’ve been amazed at how quickly some of those folks in the upper brass level fall apart like a house of cards. I’m just speaking from experience. But it’s an ongoing thing as I’m sitting right here working with a guy about whether or not to file a civil rights violation on a recent fatal shooting of a mental ill…with some evidentiary…problems.

  32. 32
    Radfem says:

    And you can’t let them push you around either. The chief tried that crap with me even getting in my face in front of a crowd of people. That and his tendency to be verbally abusive to mouthy females…well that wasn’t and shouldn’t be allowed to happen. By the time I got done with him, his boss the city manager dinged him with a reprimand in writing.

    Needless to say, he’s quieted down since and I have to say he’s been somewhat nicer to those he verbally abused in public.