Kick Ass: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

by Carl Hiaasen

  This isn't Zero Tolerance, it's zero intelligence.

  Of all the idiotic ways to waste money and manpower, this is one of the all-time tops. It ranks with the infamous Florida City Roadblock of 1982, when hundreds of cars northbound from the Keys were stopped and randomly searched for drugs and illegal aliens.

  The roadblock resulted in only a few seizures, and the State Attorney's Office refused to prosecute because of constitutional questions. Out of pure embarrassment, the debacle was not repeated.

  Now comes Zero Tolerance, which permits the confiscation of any vessel carrying even minuscule amounts of drugs. Forget the fundamental questions of guilt or innocence: Who had possession of the stuff? Who carried it on the boat? Did the owner even know?

  The ostensible point is to punish recreational drug consumers for their role in the nation's hellish narcotics problem.

  On Sunday the Ark Royal was towed to Key West amid much fanfare and many mini-cams. What a blow against the drug cartels: a swank $2.5 million yacht in tow, all because of 1/10th of an ounce of pot!

  Before you start cheering, consider this: The Ark Royal's owner was far away in California when his boat was seized. Not a shred of evidence connected him to the teaspoon of marijuana, or to any narcotics involvement. Yet he's the one who had to pay.

  The Coast Guard returned the Ark Royal Tuesday, but what of the other Zero Tolerance cases? The U.S. government (meaning taxpayers) will spend a small fortune pursuing the seizures, only to get pounded in court.

  The policy is rotten with holes: indiscriminate, inequitable, ineffective. Do charter captains now have to strip-search their customers before heading out for a day of deep-sea fishing? And what about the big cruise liners—why isn't the Coast Guard boarding the S.S. Norway for a cabin-by-cabin shakedown?

  Taking Zero Tolerance to its logical extreme, perhaps we'll see a day when the Coasties confiscate one of our own aircraft carriers because some dumb sailor stashed a joint in his bunk. Think of what the U.S.S. Nimitz would bring at public auction!

  The very idea of using the Coast Guard for this headline-grabbing nonsense is an insult to the men and women who serve in the agency. If search-and-rescue has been officially replaced by search-and-seizure, then at least let them go for tonnage, not tokers.

  All this year we've heard the Coast Guard brass complaining about the $100 million shortfall in the current budget—a deficit that's forcing cutbacks in the agency's interdiction efforts.

  But if this is what they wanted the money for, then their budget deserves to be hacked. Give the extra millions to the DEA, or to local police. Shut down some crack houses. Put some real smugglers in jail.

  There's no question that casual drug users fuel the underground narcotics economy, but confiscating private boats—whether it's the Ark Royal or a leaky dinghy—won't change a thing. It certainly won't change anyone's mind about using grass or cocaine. That takes education, and education isn't as splashy as a fancy yacht.

  Zero Tolerance is a stunt that displays the sinking desperation, and hypocrisy, of the so-called war on drugs. While Reagan's boys secretly negotiate a cushy exit for a dope-dealing tyrant in Panama, the Coast Guard is snooping after ski boats off Crandon Beach.

  Drug czar would scare any pusher

  June 24, 1988

  Pablo Escobar and the rest of the South American drug barons are undoubtedly quaking in their Guccis, following the announcement that Florida soon will have a full-time "drug czar."

  This promises to be a thrilling mission, at least the way Gov. Bob Martinez describes it.

  He promises that the new czar will have broad responsibility for fighting narcotics on all fronts. The governor went so far as to say that the drug czar will have his very own task force, and that this task force will actually have the power to make "recommendations."

  I can already hear those lily-livered liberals crying whoa, let's not get carried away! A task force is so … extreme—why not start with a committee, or maybe a small advisory board?

  But I say bravo, Governor! Throw down the gauntlet. Take off the gloves. When the going gets tough, the tough make recommendations.

  Martinez proposes urine testing for bus drivers and the death penalty for drug kingpins, and he stands the same chance of achieving either one. One of the governor's boldest ideas is to unleash the National Guard to do battle against the cocaine titans. This should certainly liven up those long weekends at the armory.

  The governor was not terribly specific about exactly what the National Guard is supposed to do, but this is why you need a drug czar, to nail down the details.

  Another important priority of the $6o,ooo-a-year drug czar should be thinking up snazzy code names for investigations.

  You've noticed that every major drug bust has a clever-sounding name to go with it—Operation Grouper, Operation Black Tuna, and so on. Unfortunately, after so many years and so many big cases, we're running short of catchy code words. Now you hear things like Operation Dead Flounder, or Zero Tolerance.

  We desperately need a drug czar to make sure that all future nicknames sound good on TV and fit neatly into newspaper headlines.

  "Czar" itself is a word that newspapers love because it's short, and it has a "z" in it. Headline writers almost never get to use the letter z, so in the months ahead you'll be seeing many news items such as: "Drug Czar Says Crack is Very Bad."

  Or: "Czar to Smugglers: Stay Out of Florida!"

  One of the czar's most vital jobs will be to call press conferences in order to "put the drug smugglers of the world on notice." This should be done at least twice every year.

  One problem facing the new czar is that so many different law enforcement agencies are fighting Florida's drug war, it's hard to know who should get the praise for a big seizure.

  To avoid having Customs and DEA and FDLE and the Coast Guard and the FBI and OCB and ATF trample each other dashing for the microphones at press conferences, we need a drug czar who can claim credit for each and every kilogram, and do the speaking for everybody.

  We also need someone who knows something about camera angles, so that the contraband can be displayed in a fashion that is dramatic, without being garish.

  To show that he means business, Gov. Martinez gave his new task force exactly seven months to come up with its first batch of recommendations. You can bet that Escobar and his pals are marking that time on their calendars, knowing that the clock is finally running out.

  Of course, they should be careful not to confuse the Governor's Drug Czar's Task Force with the Vice President's South Florida Task Force, or the Blue Lightning Strike Force, or the Congressional Task Force, or the joint DEA-FBI Task Force, or the Joint Legislative-Executive Task Force, or any of the other nine jillion task forces already deployed in the war on drugs.

  The usual cynics have implied that the czar/task force idea is nothing but a naked grab for publicity, but I don't buy it.

  Ask any expert and he'll tell you that Gov. Martinez is so right. Winning the war on drugs is easier than any of us dreamed. All we really need is more bureaucracy.

  Mason jars won't make roads safer

  February 17, 1989

  Great Moments in Urinalysis (continued):

  Now Gov. Bob Martinez has proposed drug-testing for all first-time applicants for a Florida driver license. The screening would cost each driver an extra $30 and would be conducted one month before applying.

  Again Bladder-Buster Bob has come up with an idea that commands headlines but defies logic and common sense. Our current driver system is hardly a triumph for public safety. Ask any state trooper about the thousands of licensed motorists who are hopelessly impaired without the influence of narcotics. They are simply inept.

  Up at Emission Control, Martinez insists that urine tests for Florida drivers will deter drug use and weed out the serious abusers. Yet in its present form, his plan would do neither.

  The flaws reflect either ignorance or naivete by two panels, one an "advisory cou
ncil" and the other a "task force" assigned by the governor to tackle the drug problem. The gaps in the urine-testing program are bad enough, but the premise is based on a fantasy.

  There's not a shred of good evidence—medical, sociological, criminal or otherwise—-that mandatory preannounced drug screening either discourages or prevents abuse. Only a half-wit or a hapless addict is going to get loaded on the day before his urine test—and most users don't fall into either category.

  Martinez is correct when he says that driving is a privilege, not a right. But he's daft if he thinks urinalysis of driver applicants is going to make for safer streets—not unless they invent a car with a spectrom-* eter built into the dashboard; a car that won't start until the driver fills a specimen jar.

  By far the most lethal drug is alcohol, but I didn't hear the governor explain how his new plan was going to keep drunks off the road. If Martinez is serious, why stop with a urine test? When a driver goes for his license, give him a Breathalyzer, too. It would make about as much as sense as what he's suggesting now.

  In fact, the governor's urine screen for drivers is not a drug test so much as an intelligence test. Anybody who couldn't beat it is certainly too stupid to get behind the wheel of a car.

  It's so simple. Lay off the coke for a couple days and your specimen will be as pure as a mountain stream. A month later, when you go for your driver license, your nostrils can sparkle like the valleys of Aspen but it won't matter, as long as you can parallel park.

  And consider the estimated $30 that each driver will pay to get his urine analyzed. Under the most rigid clinical conditions, urinalysis is never error-free. Imagine the quality of the lab work when the state starts handing out contracts to hacks and phonies looking to cash in on the new gold rush.

  The governor's plan to test new drivers means more than a million urine samples a year. At $30 a clip, that adds up to serious money. And in Florida, serious money attracts serious sleaze.

  Don't be surprised if the same guys who used to peddle time shares and oil leases suddenly turn up in Tallahassee with white coats and a van full of Mason jars. And don't be surprised if they get a piece of the action.

  A most mystifying aspect of Martinez's urine manifesto is that it applies only to first-time applicants for a driver license.

  Though the governor exhibits grave concern about our drug-riddled workplaces and neighborhoods, notice that he doesn't suggest urine testing as a condition of license renewal for Florida's current 10 million drivers—which would include, coincidentally, most legislators, Cabinet members and Supreme Court justices, not to mention major campaign contributors.

  Rather, Martinez's bold new attack on the drug plague focuses on two nefarious groups of would-be motorists—retirees moving to Florida and teenagers just turning 16.

  For years lawmen have been scheming for a way to outwit these dope-crazed renegades, and now they've got the break they need.

  So you wanna drive, huh? Then line up and tinkle, Gramps.

  Cops making crack makes little sense

  April 26, 1989

  "It's sort of like making fudge."

  —Lab director of the Broward Sheriffs Office, explaining his recipe for crack cocaine.

  So Broward County is manufacturing its own crack. Why not? Nothing better illustrates the misguided, haphazard state of the so-called war on drugs.

  Talk about mixed-up priorities. Talk about headline-grabbing. Talk about a Keystone Kops mentality. Naturally you're talking about Nick Navarro, Sheriff Willie Wonka himself.

  Of all the goofball stunts he's tried (including his comical TV partnership with Geraldo Rivera), a crack factory is the screwiest of all.

  In a seventh-floor lab of the Broward Sheriffs Office, a county chemist cooks up a plate of fresh crack cocaine. The crack is cut into $20 rocks, packaged in tiny plastic baggies and sold on the streets. Sold by cops. When people come up to buy, they get busted.

  You might wonder why no other law enforcement agency in the country has tried this clever scheme. There are plenty of reasons, starting with common sense.

  The technique by which undercover cops "sell" drugs is known as a reverse sting, tricky enough under the best of circumstances. Typically, police officers posing as drug sellers must display or "flash" a package of real dope to the prospective buyers. Once the deal is made and money changes hands, the cops can make the arrests.

  The danger is obvious: rip-offs. The bad guys arrive not with cash, but with guns. The plan is to steal the cocaine and take off. This is what happened when Miami Beach officer Scott Rakow was murdered—a reverse sting gone bad. Years ago, DEA agents nearly lost a truckload of marijuana when a reverse sting turned into a bloody rip-off at a South Dade warehouse.

  Suppose a Broward Sheriff's Office deputy trying to sell dope gets robbed, and suddenly some dirtbag is loose on the street, peddling Navarro-brand crack to school kids—crack manufactured by the same people who are supposed to be taking it off the streets.

  Why is Broward cooking its own? Officers say they aren't confiscating enough crack to use in big drug stings. Not enough crack? Other urban police departments have no trouble seizing plenty. There's not exactly a shortage of the stuff, especially in South Florida.

  Another problem is honesty. The Broward crack lab relies on the assumption that every officer who comes in contact with the cocaine will be straight and pure. In a dream world this might be true, but virtually every local law enforcement agency—from the DEA to the Sweetwater police—has suffered the scandal of drug corruption.

  All it takes is one crooked cop and you've got more dope on the streets. Grade-A government dope.

  An experienced DEA agent voices a different concern about cops making their own crack: What will happen when these cases go to court? If a fed-up judge trashes the Navarro scheme, it could affect all reverse-sting operations. Such a court decision—over a lousy $20 rock—could cripple many multimillion dollar cocaine investigations.

  A second-year law student could have a field day attacking the crack lab: "And where did these drugs come from, Deputy Smith?"

  "Uh, we made it ourselves."

  "Really? So you manufactured the cocaine. You took it out on the street. You offered it to my client for sale. Yet my client is the one who gets arrested!"

  The question that inevitably will be raised in court: By creating the drugs, are the cops creating the crime? Have they crossed the line between enforcement and entrapment? And for what—15 seconds of glory on the local news.

  Imagine, in the days of Prohibition, if the government decided to open its own distillery. Brewed up a batch of hooch, bottled it, parked a truck on the streets of Chicago and offered everybody a snoot. You don't think the jails would have overflowed in two hours?

  Blockbuster statistics, sure, and big headlines—but absolutely no dent in the problem.

  Everybody expects cops to seize dope. Nobody expects them to make the stuff. Just try to convince a South Florida jury that there isn't enough crack out there already.

  U.S. murder of drug lords invites chaos

  June 12, 1989

  Your Tax Dollars at Work (continued):

  Last week, it was revealed that U.S. authorities are considering the launching of hit squads to assassinate drug kingpins in foreign countries.

  A day later, the U.S. Customs Service announced that it had foiled an assassination attempt on the life of Colombian cocaine lord Pablo Escobar Gaviria.

  I wish they'd make up their minds. Either it's all right to murder these guys, or it isn't.

  In the first case, a couple of fine upstanding South Floridians were arrested on the turnpike with 23 MAC-11s, 18 AR-15 assault rifles, five machine guns and assorted other party favors, recently purchased from a Palm Beach County arms dealer.

  The government says the weapons were on their way to Colombia to be used in an elaborate plot to snuff the elusive Mr. Escobar, a leader of the Medellin cocaine cartel. The killing was allegedly ordered by the rival
Cali cartel, with whom Escobar has had long-running business disputes.

  In announcing the weapons seizure, Customs officials conceded that a larger public service might have been achieved had the assassins been allowed to carry out their mission. However, there are still a few gun laws left in this country, and Customs felt morally compelled to enforce a couple.

  In the meantime, U.S. Attorney Dexter Lehtinen (who had called his own press conference to announce the capture of another alleged cocaine gangster) went out of his way to chastise Customs for "leaking" the details of the Escobar escapade. This snippy exchange typifies the sort of selfless commitment and close interagency cooperation that has helped make the drug war the raging success that it is.

  The joke of the week, though, belongs to those geniuses at the National Security Council who are now mapping plans to sneak into South America and murder suspected drug leaders. This ought to be a riot.

  The idea is that by knocking off a couple of Escobars and Ochoas, we throw the cartels into chaos and disrupt the flow of cocaine. Absolute nonsense—but exactly the sort of James Bond theatrics that would appeal to desperate bureaucrats who don't know any better.

  Certainly the cartels are led by evil, violent men, and certainly they have inflicted unfathomable misery on this country, as well as their own. But killing them will achieve nothing except to bring vicious retaliation against U.S. drug agents, diplomats and civilians in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.

  A man such as Escobar already lives in constant fear of being murdered by his own colleagues. He is protected by armed bodyguards, as well as by crooked cops and soldiers. Assuming a U.S.-backed hit squad could even get to him, it would almost inevitably cost American lives.

  And for what? Within days of Escobar's death, there would be a new face at the top of cocaine's corporate ladder. The crops would still grow, the labs would still cook, the planes would still fly.