Law Enforcement Against Prohibition’s (LEAP) newest blogger, one
Officer Anonymous, pulls no punches about his disgust over the drug
war.
Via The Raw Story, he relates his very first drug arrest which
involved a minor traffic stop.

The guy, I think he had a defective taillight or something. He
was sober, polite, respectful, no problems, and my training officer
said, ‘Oh yeah, he’s gonna have drugs.’

The guy okayed a vehicle search and turned out to have some
(non-specific) hard drugs on him. Officer Anonymous felt guilty
even then that the man was facing seriously jail time and he
thought “This is not the war on drugs I thought it would be.”

LEAP is a kick-ass organization, with an added
uncomfortable-awesome quality for those of us who are nervous about
cops in general, because they’re pretty much the embodiment of
those good apples trying to make up for the rotten rest of the
barrel. But they’re not just the cops who have learned to regret
some of their drug war moments post-retirement. They also have
active-duty cops, or at least this new fellow.  He’s staying
anonymous, though, in order to save himself from getting in
trouble. This doesn’t seem like a bad career move in a world where
a U.S. Border Patrol agent was recently 
fired for simply discussing the possibility of
legalization.

It’s hard to feel sympathy for certain cops, particularly those
who started off their careers perpetuating what could arguably
called one of libertarians’ biggest pet issues (for good reason).
Which is why it’s good for me to see Major Neil Franklin, the
executive director of LEAP, speak about the death of his comrade,
Edward Toatley at the Baltimore Police Department. Toatley was
killed while making an undercover purchase of cocaine from “a
mid-level drug dealer.” Franklin tends to tear up when he
speaks about it (both in the video below and when I saw him speak
at an anti-drug war rally near the White House this summer), and
it’s pretty difficult not to feel a pang of sympathy. Cops get fed
propaganda, too. Some of them just believe that they’re fighting
for all us little people; fighting the scourge of drugs. That
doesn’t excuse or erase what they do, but it makes them a little
easier to forgive when they wake up, as Franklin, Officer
Anonymous, and the rest of LEAP’s members have done.

I can’t decide if I wish Officer Anonymous would stand up and
express his disapproval of the drug war, or better yet, quit his
police job altogether  — which I assume still requires
him to participate in the drug war to some extent  — or
whether he’s doing more good shining a light on what’s happening
behind that blue line.

More words from
Anonymous’ LEAP blog, some of which bring optimism:

Despite my current silence, I believe a paradigm shift regarding
the drug war is quietly occurring in every law enforcement agency
in this country, thanks in large part to the efforts of LEAP. 
This paradigm shift is palpable— I can see it, feel it, and on
occasion I hear it slip out from fellow officers and even
supervisors once in a blue moon.  I firmly believe things are
about to change in this country, and when they do, those within law
enforcement will be jumping off this drug war rat ship like it was
on fire.  And the jumpers will proclaim that they knew the
drug war was wrong the whole time.  But alas, I am not here to
judge or point fingers at those wearing badges—I wear one
too.  I too am riding on that drug war rat ship.  Gladly,
I will be jumping off that rat ship with everyone else.  In
the meantime, I can point no fingers, except at myself.  

Check it out. And check out Reason on
LEAP and on the
drug war. Also, Nick Gillespie and Reason.tv’s interview with
Franklin on the occasion of the dug war’s official 40th anniversary
this summer: