Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 25, 2015)
News Page 4 Street Roots • Sept. 25-Oct. 1,2015 A U.S. Army soldier walks through a poppy field during an operation in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan in Gemment haphazard efforts to eradicate poppy, and the Taliban has stepped up to protect farmers, says Inge Fryklund, an expert on Afghan governine . ENFORCER TURNED ADVERSARY How a former criminal prosecutor became one of Oregon’s fiercest drug-legalization advocates BY EMILY GREEN STAFF WRITER s a Chicago prosecutor in the 1980s, Inge Fryklund witnessed drug prohibition play out in the American courtroom. Decades later, as an adviser to - US. military deploying to Iraq and r Afghanistan, she learned how the poppy trade in Afghanistan was complicating U.S. counterterrorism efforts and fueling the insurgency. Her experiences led her to become one of Oregon’s fiercest drug prohibition adversaries — and she’s not the only person who’s worked in law enforcement to come out in favor of across-the-board legalization. After returning from an assignment in Afghanistan in 2013, she joined a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and now sits on its board of directors. LEAP was founded in 2002 by five police PHOTO COURTESY OF INGE FRYKLUND officers in Medford, Mass., who, after a Inge Fryklund sits on a U.S. tank in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Fryklund says that in lifetime of police work, concluded the war on drugs was causing more harm than good. photos from Ferguson, Mo., police appear more geared up than troops fighting in Today, LEAP has more than 150,000 Afghanistan because the feds give surplus members in 127 countries. military equipment to local law enforcement “Almost all of us are former law authorized to fight the war on drugs. enforcement,’’ Fryklund said. “Former prosecutors, judges, police, probation role and was a featured panelist in a officers who have seen the war on drugs televised debate at Portland State close up and personal and have concluded University’s Lincoln Hall in October. that the downsides simply outweigh any Fryklund spoke with Street Roots earlier positive benefits.” this month from her home in Bend about The group is not in favor of drugs but illegal poppy production in Afghanistan, the advocates for a system of legalization and . militarization of U.S. police and the regulation that it believes will end drug- disproportionate cycling of minority groups related violence, reduce crime rates, keep through the U.S. justice system. children safer, reduce addiction and use tax dollars more efficiently. Emily Grëen: Tell 'me about how you first When Fryklund’s not advising U.S. troops got involved in the war on drugs. What was overseas as one of the world’s foremost your perspective on illegal drug use at that experts on Afghan governmental systems, time? she’s advocating for drug legalization in the U.S. Her commentary appears in various online publications such as The Huffington Inge Fryklund: This goes back to Post, and she travels the state, giving around 1984 when I became an assistant lectures and testifying in favor of state’s attorney, which is another term for legalization. During the campaign for district attorney, in the office of Cook Oregon’s Measure 91, she played an integral County (Chicago). I worked night bond A court a lot, and during that time, my thinking was, “Drugs are bad. These people were using drugs, so-so much for th,em.” When you’re in a high-volume courtroom, you keep moving things along as fast as possible. But there were things I noticed that sank in time, thcm w;ast -. , .. tiiatthepopulation of people coining through the bond courts, most of them on minor drug cases, was disproportionately black - some Hispanic, almost no white. The statistics are that the profile of drug use across races is very similar. But here, it looked as though the criminal justice system was coming down a lot heavier on the minority population. Second, I saw an awful lot of repeat customers coming through the bond courts. People get arrested, they bond out, serve a few days, back on the streets, and then they show up again next week, or they’re in on some minor theft charge. So there was this continual churning. Also, when I would look at the rap sheets, you might get a couple of pages of arrests and some convictions, much of it drug related, and I knew that these people were never going to get a job in the legitimate economy, having that on their records. So part of what we were accomplishing through all of these arrests and convictions was cycling people back into the drug economy; that was really the only career path open to them. And this settled in my memory over time: “Why are we doing this? We’re doing the same thing. They’re doing the same thing. Nothing changes.” A year or so after that assignment, I was assigned to spend the summer in the domestic violence court We could have closed the court if it hadn’t been for alcohol. That’s what was driving most of the family violence. There was very little nexus between drug use and domestic violence. Chicago’s the poster child for what happens when something illegal is in high demand: prohibition of alcohol in the Al See DRUG WAR, page 5
