ron allen head of the international faith based coalition and a former drug addict. good morning to both of you. good morning, dave. kneel, let me start with you in a letter you wrote to eric holder. you say this is not a challenge. this is invitation. why do you want the doj to stay out of this? i should tell our viewers you are a former narcotics regional commander for the maryland state police so you know of what you speak. why do you want the doj to stay out. not just me. 73 other criminal justice professionals from our organization, law enforcement against prohibition. we want eric holder to give it a chance. the voters decided, the voters are educated today and in colorado and washington they decided that they want to give s a g they realize that their communities have become extremely violent from the prohibition of marijuana, nationally across this country we arrest over 830,000 men and women every year. most of those arrestees are black. and we stand a better chance
dole, possibly, because the parent, the mother can t support the child by themselves. they are taking it out of the community, so people complain about, you know, too many young black women having children out of wedlock. well, they take out a lot of the guys that would be marriage material if they didn t get caught with one or two joints or something in their pocket, which isn t that big of a deal, if they were going to go to work or were working at the time. or what happened, you know, in under clinton was the signing of this law that basically said you couldn t get federal financial aid to go to college if you d ever been arrested for a drug offense. so you had this kind of imbalance of people not being able to go to college and become marriage material. joining us now is neil franklin, executive director of l.e.a.p., law enforcement against prohibition. and he s a retired maryland state police major, where he also served as a narcotics agent. neil, what s your experience with thi
well, they take out a lot of the guys that would be marriage material if they didn t get caught with one or two joints or something in their pocket, which isn t that big of a deal, if they were going to go to work or were working at the time. or what happened, you know, in under clinton was the signing of this law that basically said you couldn t get federal financial aid to go to college if you d ever been arrested for a drug offense. so you had this kind of imbalance of people not being able to go to college and become marriage material. joining us now is neil franklin, executive director of l.e.a.p., law enforcement against prohibition. and he s a retired maryland state police major, where he also served as a narcotics agent. neil, what s your experience with this and where should we go from here? well, lawrence and charles, glad to be here with you guys. where should we go? well, you mentioned decriminalization. you talked about legalization, and the difference between the two.
with a little sign that says, i am here to help you. i am here to help you understand your due process. i am here to no, if you re an immigrant detained you don t have access to a lawyer and you don t really have anyone who is there who is now saying i m here, the president has made some changes in words, i m here to help you. let me color on the facts. tremendous backlash, partly because of the fine journalism both of you have done, about the effects of this ramped up enforcement and those numbers that we showed, 400,000 a year and shooting up every year. record speaks that every year. and there are two things the administration done. there was a memo issued from the top of i.c.e. which over sees enforcement about prosecutorial discretion saying these are priorities of who we deport and detain and these are not our priorities and basically saying we want to go after gang member, threats to the security of u.s., felony convictions and people who have strong ties to the community, y
mind who used to be a police officer in seattle, quite high up. maybe head of the seattle police. chief. chief of the seattle police, prominent supporter of decriminalization and ending the war on drugs. there s law enforcement against the war on drugs. there s a lawsuit against prohibition. law enforcement against prohibition. thank you for correcting me. how much of their is that a minority view? my sense is it s quite small. how broadly shared is that sense among police officers? in other words, do they talk about it publicly like when they re changing their clothes? gee, i kind of wish we need to talk about the legalization thing? it s becoming bigger and bigger. i wouldn t say it s certainly not the majority of police officers but police know what they re doing in the grand scheme isn t working. day after day it works. it seems to work. you think you go there, you put up little brush fires. you arrest a few criminals. but in the long run it s not improving things.