[ male announcer ] fiber beyond recognition. fiber one. hey, i love your cereal there it s got that sweet honey taste. but no way it s 80 calories, right? no way. lady, i just drive the truck. right, there s no way right, right? have a nice day. [ male announcer ] 80 delicious calories. fiber one. good morning from new york. i m chris hayes. immersed in our conversation during the break here. here with kai wright, peter moskos, author of the book cop in the hood. maria, anchor of pbs need to know and lead blocker of national reviews. we re talking at the war on drugs, enforcement, decriminalization, and what the war on drugs looks like at the street level. and the question i want to ask you is, how has the war on drugs changed policing? what has it done to what
crime, more gangs, and more murder. it s time to end this and legalize. for more on this let me bring in neil franklin the executive director of l.e.a.p., law enforcement against prohibition and neil is also a former undercover narcotics agent in baltimore. neil that analogy that i draw there and i think that the one that you often draw yourself between prohibition on alcohol and prohibition on drugs, is it fair or are we seeing this a little wrong? no, it s quite fair. and you gave the numbers from mexico. so i m not going to repeat those but we also have to take a really good look at the united states. alcohol prohibition, if you look at the homicide numbers with what you mentioned, in addition to other violent crimes, went up back in the 1920s during the alcohol prohibition, and you look at homicide rates of today, look at it on a chart. look at it on a graph, and you ll see the 1920 s alcohol
dealing with drug-related issues? i d say drug-related stuff was probably i m just going to shoot in the dark and say half of what i dealt with. most police officers look at drug arrests as a way of saying, look, i didn t catch theburg baltimoreburg baltimorizing but i got him with dope so getting him off the street for something. reporter: among five years on patrol, he changed his mind. how would it make the streets of torrence and other cities safer if marijuana was legalized? well, number one, it takes the criminal element that is selling it today and when i say criminal element, the people willing to break the law to do it and remember they can t call the police if they re getting robbed when they re selling drugs so they ve got to carry guns. we either make it a legitimate business or we let the gangsters run a business which is bad for all of us. reporter: he belongs to law enforcement against prohibition. a national group of former cop, prosecutors and judges
here s a big story we re covering for you this week. marijuana is on the ballot in four states. and here s a proposition for you. here s what some are proposing. legalize pot because it will bring down crime levels. that is what my next guest here. i have a retired dutch police union president on the board of leap law enforcement against prohibition. you re skyping with me from far, far away here. legal i legalize marijuana to bring crime levels down. can you explain? quite clear. we have for decades now the probugs with the love of crime and we can see deep criminalization that crime is going down. you can see it in portugal and you can see that in those
there that have been watching washington over the last decade or so and they say, you know, year after year, i vote for republicans and why are these republicans voting for these great big spending bills? they want to pull it back! reduce the spending. reduce the taxes. that s the tea party message. i think that michael castle who lost to christine o donnell who has been in office for 40 years. a moderate. lieutenant governor of delaware. governor of delaware. the sole occupant of sole congressional seat in delaware, won 10 times statewide. i think that loss is so emblematic of what s happening in the republican party today. if you don t stick to your roots, we re going to kick you out. i think that s true, too, judge. bring me to november now. we have seven weeks. 19% of the country supports the tea party. i m not talking about the republican party. 19% according to a cbs poll. this was a group that was laughed at three years ago. ignored five years ago. now, it s a major forc