Wednesday, January 25, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
Get Shorty
Many of us watched with
interest the recent — and
remarkably anti-climactic
— extradition of Joaquin “El
Chapo” Guzman to face drug
trafficking charges in the
United States. He has, natu-
rally, pleaded not guilty. As
this news broke, I received
no fewer than a dozen mes-
sages and emails from my
former partners in narcot-
ics enforcement celebrating,
to one degree or another,
“Shorty’s” arrival in New
York.
But we shouldn’t cel-
ebrate too much. The real-
ity is that Chapo’s arrest
and likely lifelong imprison-
ment won’t do a single thing
to change the equation. He
was long ago replaced, and
untold numbers of people
were murdered, in the end-
less succession drama that
plays out in the cartel strong-
holds of Mexico — which is
quite simply a narco-state.
The sale and use of illicit
narcotics are not, contrary
to the legalize movement’s
daydreams, victimless
crimes. The truth is, as any
veteran of the failed “War
on Drugs” can tell you, that
the traffic in narcotics has
a nexus to every other kind
and category of crime, from
petty theft to homicide —
and it has an extraordinary
reach. The end user has
no idea how many people
were maimed, murdered,
kidnapped, abused, raped,
or tortured for that gram of
crystal meth to finally reach
them.
Worst of all may be
the relationship of narcot-
ics usage and sales to child
neglect and endangerment,
the horrific images of which
I will spend the rest of my
life trying to forget. The
damage done by mere users
is equally far-reaching,
whether it comes from prop-
erty crimes committed to
fuel their addictions, or the
bottomless list of both vio-
lent and non-violent crimes,
the wreckage of relation-
ships with friends and fam-
ily, the enormous burden
imposed on the criminal
justice system, or the simple
cratering of their own hopes
and dreams.
But we shouldn’t kid
ourselves. The War on
Drugs, as it is presently
being fought, is an abject
failure. It isn’t, and probably
never has been, effective.
When looked at objectively
— and I entered that tube as
a true believer in the cause
— it is an industry designed
to fail. Law enforcement
will never have the money,
the manpower, or the agility
to defeat the drug cartels at
their own game. Never. The
cartels are the most powerful
and ruthless corporations on
this planet, and they simply
devour the competition.
The costs for a single
large-scale investigation into
narco-trafficking — organi-
zations that operate on the
same principle as terror-
ist cells — can easily sky-
rocket into the hundreds of
thousands, even millions, of
dollars. It can take months,
sometimes years, to start
kicking doors, seizing loads
of cash and dope, and putting
it all on the table for the big
photo-op and back-slapping
spectacle that is helpful only
for sustaining the illusion of
hope in ultimate victory.
If we arrested 15 people
in a big, above-the-fold caper
that stretched over mul-
tiple states, the mopes were
replaced in less time than it
took to book them. The case
itself would take years to
adjudicate, fought every step
of the way by cartel lawyers
who care nothing about the
mopes who were arrested,
but are seeking discovery to
figure out how law enforce-
ment got wind of them in the
first place. Armed with that
information, they change tac-
tics, or technology, and drop
the defendants neatly into
the American prison system,
where the American tax-
payer pays through the nose
for their care and comfort.
It is a revolving door of
madness.
Almost no one discusses
the violence in places like
Chicago in meaningful
terms. The street-gang vio-
lence in that city, where
762 people were murdered
last year, and some 4,331
— many of them mere chil-
dren — shot, isn’t happening
in a vacuum. What we are
witnessing is a proxy war
between Mexican drug car-
tels for control of the highly
lucrative narcotics trade in
that city, and elsewhere. I
know that to be true because
I’ve sat in a room and lis-
tened to wiretapped conver-
sations between brokers in
Mexico and their lieutenants
in Chicago.
The reality is that out-
side of marijuana — and
even that is questionable
in many cases — not one
ounce of heroin, meth,
or cocaine is sold in this
country without the hidden
hand of the Mexican cartels
somewhere along the chain.
The Mexican cartels exer-
cise absolute control over
the narcotics corridors into
this country, and its delivery
into our cities.
That hidden hand reaches
far deeper into American
society than many would like
to believe. It involves cor-
rupted judges, border patrol
agents, street cops, and
elected politicians serving
at very high levels of gov-
ernment. I don’t offer this
as opinion. I know it from
direct experience working
cases as a task force agent in
Southern California.
So, while its wonder-
ful that Shorty has been
extradited to face justice in
America, and anyone who is
being honest knows that he
is decidedly not some kind of
folk hero worthy of respect
— a Sean Penn fantasy that
is hard to square with facts
— I’m having a hard time
giving it much more than a
shrug.
Until we have some kind
of national awakening on
the importance of educat-
ing our children in an hon-
est way about the real hor-
rors of narcotics use, and
bend their minds away from
usage, the Shortys of the
world will continue to find
eager customers, continue to
exploit them, and continue
their rampant plundering and
pillaging.
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