The drug scene redux (to my 3/6/06 posting "The drug scene"). Today (3/20/06) I attended the trial in the Federal courthouse in Baltimore of two Baltimore City narcotics detectives who were charged with keeping drugs and cash which they seized when they confronted drug dealers. A drug dealer testified as a witness, in keeping with a plea agreement in his Federal conviction in a case that was unrelated to the two detectives being tried; he was cooperating with the Federal prosecutors in the case against the detectives in the hope of getting a lighter sentence in his case. He spent almost two hours telling how, after being accosted by these detectives, he was used by them to lead them to other dealers whom they would confront. According to his testimony, for his services, the detectives would give him some cash and would sell him drugs at cut-rate prices for him to resell on the street at the going rate. Sometimes the detectives would actually arrest dealers and turn in the drugs seized from them, but frequently they would let them go but keep their drugs and cash.

A detective sergeant who was the supervisor of the two detectives testified at considerable length about the huge task that the police face in dealing with the drug traffic. The lawlessness includes not only drug dealing but murder of drug gang members by other gangs–Baltimore has between 250 and 300 murders every year.

All of the individuals mentioned above–the two detectives, the drug dealer witness, and the detective sergeant–were black. The witnesses gave first-hand details of the horrific drug scene. I feel particularly bad for the decent black people who have to try to live normal lives among this sordid scene.