A press release went out yesterday from a group called LEAP, using the 75th Anniversary of the repeal of prohibition as a platform to promote their position that the War Against Drugs has failed, and it is time to put an end to it.  LEAP stands for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

The mission of LEAP is to reduce the multitude of unintended harmful consequences resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition.

Not what many would expect to hear from those who have, or are, been at the frontlines of the war. 

When I received the PR from a fellow named Tom Angell, I responded by asking for some harder information to ascertain the legitimacy of this organization.  After all, it wouldn’t be too hard for a bunch of potheads to put a few dollars together, dummy up some website as if they were cops, and make a splash without anyone knowing that there wasn’t a legitimate voice in the bunch.  Tom’s response was to take a look at their speakers.  So I did.

As I scrolled down the page, I found something that a lot of others probably would have skimmed right over.  An old friend of mine, Jeff Kaufman.  Jeff was a cop, later an attorney at Police Legal where he handled asset forfeitures, and later still a defense lawyer.  But I knew Jeff differently.  We went to college together.  We went to law school together.  I knew Jeff as a person, not just a cop or lawyer.

Jeff was incredibly smart, which is why I made fun of him for becoming a cop.  But he was a believer, and loved being a cop.  He especially liked riding in an RMP with the lights and sirens on, particularly when the donuts were fresh.  He had no qualms, none, about doing his job.  He believed in being on the front line of protecting citizens against criminals, and he was a happy soldier in the war on crime.  I’m absolutely certain that he never lost a minute of sleep worrying about the consequences.

Something changed him.  Whatever that something was, it must have been far more powerful then anything I could have said, because I know that I never made a dent in his attitude.  Whatever it was, it caused him to turn into this person :

“If they caught the owner of the Empire State Building smoking a joint in the lobby, they could take the whole building.”

Jeff Kaufman began his criminal-justice career in 1980 as a beat cop for the NYPD just as the department was emerging from the budgetary crisis caused by the city’s near-bankruptcy in the mid ’70s. Says Jeff, “At the time, the force consisted of officers who were getting ready to retire and officers like me, young and motivated to ‘take back the streets’ from the ‘bad guys.'” He was assigned to the 75th Precinct in Brooklyn – one of the busiest in New York City. Within a year, he would be one of the responding officers to the “Palm Sunday Massacre” of 11 people, thus introducing him to the effect of drugs and the ‘War on Drugs’ on his community.

In his free time, Jeff attended law school. When he passed the bar, he was transferred to the NYPD’s Legal Bureau, where, among other duties, he brought cases against individuals for forfeiture of their property. Targets included both drug dealers and recreational users. But after Jeff attended the first National Conference on Asset Forfeiture in Washington, DC, he began to see just how wrong these policies were. “The conference organizers boasted that federal asset forfeiture was the only effective way to stop drugs. They claimed that if they caught the owner of the Empire State Building smoking a joint in the lobby, they could take the whole building! The [police] chiefs that accompanied me to the conference drooled with anticipation. Finally, an answer to their budget problems.” Shortly thereafter, Jeff left the police department and became a defense attorney for the indigent. “My caseload rapidly swelled with drug cases, and I saw from another vantage point how the ‘drug war’ was destroying us. More police were hired. New tactics were utilized, where large numbers of people were caught in police sweeps and arrested without regard to our basic constitutional principles. What affected me most were the number of young people who faced draconian sentencing guidelines. Lives snuffed out by our ‘drug war.'”

In the mid ’90s Jeff learned about the need for teachers at a high school in the precinct in which he’d once patrolled. Originally intending to return to criminal law, he was offered a teaching position on Rikers Island, where he developed relationships the nature of which he had been unable to do as either police officer or attorney. “I taught criminal law to adolescents facing life sentences for violent crimes and drug felonies. In class, we had the opportunity to fully explore the ramifications of the ‘drug war.'”

I lost track of Jeff about a decade ago, and wondered what became of him.  Now I know. 

If Jeff Kaufman can be turned around like this, then it’s something to be taken very seriously.