UD - WORD


The Rant

Tripping With Cops

by Brian Dykstra


Tuesday, June 26, 1996
9:58am
Special Narcotics Section
    - Grand Jury Room A
    Sixth Floor - 80 Centre Street NY, NY





rescription Pain Killer - Percodan. Prescription says to take one,I pop two. I'm on that slow train to Timothy Leary Land as the pain centers in my brain begin to shut down. Cops, both undercover and uniformed, parade in front of an endless stream of Assistant District Attorneys, answering THE SAME QUESTIONS with THE SAME ANSWERS [ 210k .wav | 210k .au ]:
Cops excused and fat female assistants or bored ex-hippie A.D.A.'s, or Yuppie past boy-wonders who must have placed well down the list in law school [ 112k .wav | 112k .au ], otherwise why aren't they further along in their career, by now(?) read aloud from dim, smudged, faxed over lab reports that yes, the 4 grains of white powdery substance DID test positive for cocaine (by the way the hearsay law is waived in drug cases so these faxed reports are admitted into evidence). We the jury meet no defendant, but we do hear their names. Garcia, Lopez, Rodriguez ...etc. and we hear the police officer's description:

No witnesses, other than the undercover buyer and sometimes the arresting officer [ 66k .wav | 66k .au ]. We are allowed to ask questions that get answered in that Stepford Wives, Dragnet, just-the-facts manner that Dan Ackroyd almost caught in the movie version. We do like to pin them down on the accuracy of the field test kit when the answer has been "99.95% Accurate." We ask the police officer how he possesses that information. The answer, always the same is, "That's what they told us in training." Oh.


We indict everybody.
That means EVERYBODY, of all counts


By 10:35 there is a numbness in my extremities while an anxiety localized in the pit of my stomach is beginning to wane. I am painkiller calm for the first time in weeks here, while 23 (we get down to 21 because the only two young black men picked to serve get excused later in the week. We are given reasons for their dismissals, but in one case the official reason doesn't mesh with what one of them told me later when I saw him on the street.) people get our time wasted hearing cases against rank amateurs, representing the poorest trained foot soldiers, who win the War On Drugs anyway, just by making us come here.

There are four such Grand Juries in Manhattan. A total of 96 people who are asked to interrupt our lives and normal daily contributions for four weeks while cops on overtime come to testify about the job they do, ridiculously vainly attempting to stem the endless flow of narcotic drugs into a society that clearly wants access to them, and whose efforts are akin to the little Dutch Boy trying to plug the hole, no longer in that leaky dike [ 23k .wav | 23k .au ], but in the cracks at Chernobyl. I could leave this courthouse and return with cocaine for everybody in the room within the hour, or heroin, or crack. Pot in fifteen minutes. Magic Mushrooms for the cost of a phone call, actual cost and tip to the (usually) woman delivering them to my doorstep (there are services in Manhattan that only make deliveries).

We indict everybody. That means EVERYBODY, on all counts. Always. Usually in less than two minutes of what is insanely referred to as "deliberation," [ 53k .wav | 53k .au ] as we are not allowed to know how the drugs were found, why each individual was selected for arrest, how the transaction came about. We are only allowed to consider if the D.A.'s office has enough evidence to continue. We get the police officer's word about where and how the drugs were recovered and the lab report detailing what drug and how much. Yes, that's enough evidence to continue, so we raise our hands like trained orangutans, wasting our lives, rubber-stamping cases in a Byzantine system that requires 23 people for that process while enterprising drug dealers launder their money in The Cayman Islands and will never see the inside of this, or any, courtroom.


This "War On Drugs" is a ridiculous,
conceited pose from a country with much bigger, real problems to worry about.

I'm all for legalization now. Regulated drug trade, taxed, sold, available, controlled. For my part, I surrender. This "War On Drugs" is a ridiculous, conceited pose from a country with much bigger, real problems to worry about. Our drug policy has made billionaires out of petty thugs in Colombia and Peru. It's created a sub-culture of guns, cars, and cash, where human life is a crap shoot and crapping out at 17 is not only no big deal, it's the accepted norm.


tripping on painkillers in purgatory beats the shit out of not tripping on painkillers

It's time to face facts and accept defeat, but no, our inflated sense of ourselves does not allow us to understand when it's better not to fight. In fighting we lose. We lose money, lives, and man hours fighting the fight of the condemned-to-lose. I'm losing a month of my life for no reason at all, popping prescription pain killers I have no legitimate reason to possess, because I can. Even in a courthouse [ 47k .wav | 47k .au ]. Even in the Special Narcotics division of a Grand Jury. Because it doesn't matter what I do. Because nobody gives a rat's ass. Because tripping on painkillers in purgatory beats the shit out of not tripping on painkillers in purgatory. Tomorrow, maybe I'll take something else just before I get here. It's only Special Narcotics. We're only going to indict everybody, anyway. And nothing, but nothing will change. And no good will come from this. Not ever. My trip continues. I'm calm, but not sleepy. I could sleep but am amused at the ironic perceptions of where I am and what I'm doing. This is the first and only day I am not bored. I credit the Percodan.

We're on a break, right now. [ 32k .wav | 32k .au ]


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