Introduction
Laws concerning drug possession, distribution, manufacture and trafficking are all complex and wide ranging depending on the circumstances and the facts in a particular case. Consequently, it is the duty of the concerned law enforcement officer to determine whether a suspect has broken some of these laws by initiating a case. A series of legal and factual evidence is then necessary to validate the accusation and this ought to be done systematically. While all these matters may seem quite straight forward, it is imperative to realize that law enforcers have met several obstacles that normally come in the way of achieving any sound outcomes in their investigations. These matters shall be examined below.
Barriers to finding enough evidence for bringing formal charges
When officers are in the process of collecting evidence for a drug related case, they must deal with the notion of a ‘victimless crime’. Drug related investigations usually lack easily identifiable victims and this fact implies that few or no complaints are ever filed against drug traffickers, users or producers. Consequently, the drug investigator must then depend upon informants for accessing information on drug issues. The major difficulty with such an approach is that informants may represent virtually anyone from the affected community. This implies that law enforcers have the responsibility of locating and interacting with such persons. Aside from that, the very nature of the drug industry is that it is quite secretive. This implies that any strangers or new faces may be viewed with suspicion by concerned parties. Therefore, collecting evidence directly by the law enforcers may prove to be an uphill or futile task. (Lyman, 2007)
The drug industry is susceptible to so many dynamics and law enforcers must ensure that they stay abreast of new developments. For instance, from time to time, new drugs are often introduced into the illegal drug scene and some of them may be difficult to identify or detect. Consequently, law enforcers must look for unconventional ways of finding these new drugs or techniques. For example, at the onset of the war on drugs during the nineteen eighties, drug sellers realized that the arm of the law could easily catch up with them especially in light of all the new developments that had been put in place. In reaction to this, drug peddlers began employing the services of young persons who would then sell drugs on their behalf. This ensured that their efforts would go unnoticed in the eyes of the law.
There are vast resources needed to carry out effective drug investigations to ensure that no other problems arise in the wake of dealing with these problems. For example, these types of cases usually require undercover work. Real drug peddlers may have a hard time buying an undercover officer’s story if it has been shown that the officer hardly takes part in criminal activity. Consequently, an officer must collaborate with other law enforcers to stage a drug deal to make his assertions believable in the eyes of the concerned parties. (Lyman, 2007)
Law enforcers often have to deal with a series of challenges when working with informants because a number of them may endorse the criminal lifestyle as is the case with female prostitutes who may try to use their bodies to seduce law enforcers and hence have control over them. Law enforcers must therefore be very careful of such individuals. Besides that, it may also be necessary to arrange for an extra witness whenever an officer is dealing with an informant of the opposite sex because some manipulative individuals may lodge sexual harassment cases against innocent law enforcers. Informants also present law enforcers with a particularly hard time especially when payments are involved. Law officers are often required to photograph, fingerprint and consider preset amounts before disbursing payments to informants. This may sometimes require intervention by the concerned officer’s supervisor who must then ensure that any payment made is in line with prior agreements made before establishing a relationship with one’s informant. A cooperating agreement must be signed to ensure that parties stay obliged to their responsibilities. All these technicalities can substantially reduce the rate at which drug investigations cases get processed. (Lyman, 2007)
Getting evidence necessary for bringing formal charges is also quite a challenging task because in the past, it has been shown that drug traffickers often show little hesitance when it comes to commission of murder or any other violent crime against law enforcers. Officers must therefore deal with the fear of loss of life when handling drug related investigations. Sometimes, it may be necessary to make arrangements before these investigations to protect one’s life. All these issues further contribute to ineffective outcomes in dealing with the drug problem.
Sometimes, it may be necessary to employ the services of the crime lab to validate one’s cases. This implies that officers have to leave some aspect of their investigations to a third party and this may be a point of concern to the latter individuals. If the crime laboratory follows undue procedure in claiming against a suspect, then chances are that the entire case has lost its meaning and that there may be no need to proceed with formal charges.
Witnesses often serve as strong validation for any case on drugs. Law enforcers must therefore ensure that they find highly credible witnesses who are perceived as truthful and neutral. This may sometimes be difficult given time constraints and other budgetary limitations. Law enforcement therefore falls short in this area and it may be difficult to carry out an effective case against a suspect.
It should be noted that the law has is marred with inefficiencies in chemical analyses of seized products. For example, sometimes a product may have various synonyms. Consequently, based on the name alone, crime labs cannot have substantial evidence to claim the accused. In this regard, a chemical analysis on the molecular structure of the substance may be necessary and more often than not this may end up being a complicated procedure. One carbon skeleton can have over seven thousand variations with regard to its substituents. This means that aspects such as molecular weight alone cannot be accurately relied on to make assumptions about certain compounds. Also, it may be possible to find that the substance under consideration has no standards within the concerned lab and this may require making a customized standard. Such a procedure is often too expensive and may come in the way of sound criminal investigations. (Campbell, 2003)
Barriers to initiating a drug case
Before law enforcement officers can initiate a drug case, they must first determine whether the suspect was in ‘actual’ possession of the drug or whether the concerned party was in ‘constructive’ possession of the drug. The former refers to a situation in which a person has been caught handling a drug and in such instances, it is relatively easy to commence investigations as this is what the law recognizes immediately. For example, if an officer found a person with a bag of heroine in their pockets, then that person is guilty of actual drug possession and it is safe to initiate a drug case against him or her. On the other hand, if the concerned party was under constructive possession of the drug then matters can be dramatically different. The latter term refers to that situation where an individual probably has an illegal drug and possesses the ability to gain access to that contraband. For instance, when an officer searches a motor vehicle and finds a bag of marijuana in the back of the car then the officer soon finds out that the car belonged to a friend and the affected person claims lack of knowledge of that substance. It may therefore be necessary for such an officer to first prove that this individual knew the whereabouts of the drug and that he/ she could access the drug. Although such contraband may have belonged to the owner of the motor vehicle, law officers can choose to file complaints against the accused after constructive possession has been proved. (Friedman, 2003)
In the process of initiating a drug case, lawyers often have the right to intervene in the case. Depending on the strength brought forward by the latter, officers may opt to file lesser charges or dismiss formal charges completely. This is because a lawyer may bring out witnesses or narrate the accused sides quite effectively. While this may seem like a perfectly legal and just manner of doing things, there have been certain circumstances in which lawyers have manipulated legal loopholes. This eventually causes guilty person to go scot free as law enforces may choose to let go of a case if they feel that they will be facing a very intense form of opposition.
To initiate a drug case, a law enforcer must search a certain premises or person to raise charges against that person. However one is not always free to carry out searches as care must be taken to ensure that this is done legally. Accused persons often use unlawful seizure or unlawful searches as a line of defense against arrests. This usually places officers in a difficult position of first establishing whether they are carrying out their investigations legally. This is because if the search was unlawful then any evidence collected from that’s search cannot be presented to court and this usually implies that accused persons can be acquitted off their charges. This issue emanates from the poisonous tree principle in law. Here, it is stated that if a law enforcement procedure is illegal then any evidence or accusations that come out of it are also illegal much like a poisonous tree that bears poisonous fruits. Consequently, the law impedes case initiation. (International Narcotics Board, 2001)
It should also be noted that law enforcers must go through a painstaking process of establishing a link between the actual existence of drugs within the vicinity of a certain suspect and the actual ability to access that drug at that time. If there is lack of evidence to indicate that the said individual could not access the drug, then officers may be discouraged from initiating a drug case against the accused.
The experience and ability of the law enforcer also present a huge obstacle in initiating drug related cases because these have often been used by defense attorneys as suitable lines of defense for the accused. Young officers are often questioned on their ability to follow due procedure and their ability to know what needs to be done on such matters. It is therefore common to find that such individuals often direct cases to older officers who may sometimes be dealing with their cases and this may prevent investigations on the fore mentioned suspects. Usually, these young officers lack ample training on carrying out such investigations as they may not have spent enough time within certain police units. (Crimmins, Browntein & Spunt, 2000)
One of the biggest problems currently brought forward against law enforcers is their inability to accurately and timely use communications technologies to find evidence in drug related cases. Law enforcers have been accused of letting drug related crimes proceed for fairly long periods without filing any formal charges against such persons. The reason behind this fact is that sometimes law enforcers may be trying too hard to look for bigger accusations against suspects and this ends up causing prolonged law breakage. Sometimes the CIA may be well aware of a drug sale and several transactions that followed after such a sale in subsequent months but may fail to do anything about the matter. This has happened when new equipment such as computer surveillance cameras has been installed in such units. Arrest may be made after excessively long periods even when the manufacture and distribution of that product commenced from the onset of the inquiry. A case in point was the San Diego police and the 2003 case against a drug dealer. At that time, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were working on new investigative techniques that were based on surveillance technologies. The defendant in this case was working with some associates and he was planning drug related deals. However, because the latter agencies were more interested in seeing whether their new procedures were going to be effective, they failed to act upon very obvious evidence pointing towards the wrong doing of the concerned parties. In the end, it became clear that these law enforcers had failed in their duties.
The problem with collection of evidence from certain groups may sometimes take on an ideological perspective. In other words, it may be possible to find that a certain person largely objects to the employment of criminal procedures against non violent victims. In other words, some investigators may believe more in treatment programs than the incarceration of drug takers. Usually, when investigators realize that a suspect is willing and able to carry out a drug rehabilitation program, then one might find that the former may not file formal charges against the accused since he or she sees the futility in their efforts. Even though such officers are usually acting in breach of duties, one cannot ignore the fact that these issues still take place. (Ehrlich, 2005)
It is a known fact that steroids are also classified as illegal substances especially when it has been shown that the steroids have anabolic effects on the human body. Most of the time, these products are often marketed to athletes who may ingest them in the hope of improving sports performances or in the hope of increasing muscle strength. In the Controlled substances act, steroids are recognized as category three substances and must therefore be eliminated at all costs. However, the major problem that law enforcers may have in conducting investigations in such cases is the complicated nature of marketing processes. While other illegal substances are usually sold in their natural forms, steroids are often disguised as dietary supplements and this may be very misleading to both law enforcers and potential users as well. Even the manufacturing process of such substances may have been subjected to quality control and it may be extremely difficult for law enforcers to effectively bring out cases against such persons. Steroids also present a huge challenge to the law enforcer because he or she must consider the role of the Federal drug Authority in this case. Sometimes, the commitment to eradication of such unsafe products may be non existent in the latter group thus making it difficult to collect reasonable information against accused persons.
The nature of the drug investigative process is also another barrier to the collection of drug related evidence. This is because locations of the illegal narcotics must first be determined by the concerned officer. This should then be followed by a search. Subsequently, some legal and scientific analyses may be necessary to validate one’s case. In the end, drug investigators have to dedicate many months into a certain case and this makes it very difficult to deal with several other cases. (Rasmussen & Sollars, 1998)
Sometimes, it may be possible to find new drugs in the market (sometimes known as designer drugs). Usually, drug dealers and manufacturers often create drugs that contain substances not yet listed in state books as illegal but they have more or less the same effect as prevailing illegal substances in the market. Law enforcers therefore face the uphill task of carrying out Felony violation charges against persons using these designer drugs yet most of them are not covered by law. In such cases, individuals may continue using such commodities for long durations of time without being punished for their actions and this normally makes the law very ineffective.
Law enforcers must deal with the problem of differentiating between legal and illegal substances. Sometimes, there may be problems with the ingredients under consideration as some of them may come in their natural form. This means that the said law enforcer must direct the product to the crime lab where it must first be tested. Shortly after, decisions have to be made on whether such a substance is actually located in the illegal substances list and this must usually be done through consultation of literature. Aside from that, a lot of care should be taken in ensuring that the effect of the active ingredient within a certain drug can cause some harm and all these complexities may affect the ability to use such evidence.
Sometimes there are serious challenges that law enforcers must go through when dealing with importation of drugs. More often than not, the raw materials needed to manufacture a narcotic may be mislabeled. In such instances, the products are disguised as other conventional substances with similar appearances and it may be very difficult for law enforcers to follow through on such techniques. In the end, huge amounts of illegal substances may be smuggled into the country. In other situations, the concerned parties may use the mailing and parcel delivery systems to import these illegal substances. Law enforcers may not have the time and resources to accurately assess whether all products entering the country through the mailings services are legal. This forms a huge loophole for drug dealers and distributors as it is a perfect way of escaping the watchful arm of the law especially when enforcing border controls.
Law enforcers must also be content with the fact that certain products may not be classified as illegal. This means that the DEA has to step to reclassify such a product. This process takes a lot of time as pharmacological and chemical aspects must be defined. By the time the Drug Enforcement Authority has done this, then a manufacturer may already have altered the constituents of the illegal substance and thus have made it possible to escape the watchful eye of the law. (Douglas, 2001)
What can be done to make the process more manageable
Collaborative efforts are necessary to ensure that all stakeholders involved in the drug problem can deal with it in an accurate and timely manner. These stakeholders include the Federal Drug Authority (FDA), the Drug Enforcement Authority (DEA), federal agencies, law enforcement officials, investigators and other professionals. It is critical for these various groups to frequently update each other on any information that they possess with regard to certain cases. Aside from that, it may also be necessary to reinforce frequent updates on any information regarding designer drugs from agencies that may have encountered them. In line with this, the DEA should streamline its process of reclassifying new drugs to make it easier for law enforcement officials to easily file charges on a specific drug. (Drug Policy Alliance, 2002)
As it has been stated earlier, sometimes police officers may witness occurrence of drug crimes but may choose not to file charges until they can gather bigger cases to deal with the problem. However, this impedes justice as it means that several criminals go unpunished just so that law enforcers can bring forward bigger cases. Law enforcers need to be bound by certain rules that allow them to file formal charges without having to look for very heavy evidence. As it can be seen there are systemic flaws in the law enforcement process if priorities are given to computer surveillance technologies rather than the capture of wrongful individuals.
Police officers need to be equipped with the skills and training needed to handle drug related cases. This is especially useful when defense attorneys attack the credibility of the officer in charge; consequently, sufficient training before and after recruitment needs to be done.
In line with the latter argument is the need for law enforcement agencies to be better funded. While some opponents argue that the country is already spending sufficient amounts of money on the drug issue yet minimal results have been realized then it may be necessary to look into other strategies. However, these arguments are too short sighted; law enforcers need support now more than ever. As it has been seen, numerous obstacles normally come in the way of performing investigations. The very nature of the drug industry is such that complainants are virtually non existent. Therefore, the best strategy is through undercover work or the use of informants. However, for this to work effectively then a lot of preparations must be made although they require ample resources. Law makers need to support the drug effort by investing in it adequately as budgetary constraints have been known to undermine work.
Perhaps another fundamental aspect of dealing with the drug problem is through addressing ideological barriers. Several researchers agree that punitive measures for tackling drug may not necessarily work as they tend to encourage rather than discourage drug use. Law makers must therefore think of minimizing possession charges as most of them are mere victims of drugs. It would be more productive for law enforcers to go after suppliers who distribute manufacture, and sell the commodities to individuals. However dealing with the supply side alone will only solve one part of the equation as many reasons still cause people to take drugs. The demand side of this drug problem must be dealt with by offering treatment programs and this may reduce the need to focus on arrests. (Goode, 2008)
Conclusion
The biggest problem that narcotics investigators and dug enforcers face is the long process involved in identifying locations, searching premises and collecting evidence from such locations. Court orders, undercover work and the use of informants are just some of the issues revolving around these investigations. It may therefore be necessary to support such investigators through budgetary support and elimination of excessive bureaucracy in the force.
References
Campbell, R. (2003). Legislators on punishment, the budget and prisons. Vera justice institute press
Crimmins, S., Browntein, H & Spunt, B. (2000). Operationalizing drug market stability and violence. Journal of contemporary drug problems 27(66), 868
Douglas, K. (2001). Drug money and the changing world. Web.
Drug Policy Alliance (2002). Drug treatment and supply side measures. NY: Routledge
Ehrlich, T. (2005). Facts on the drug war. NY: Putnam publishers
Friedman, D. (2003). Violence, drugs and economics. CA: Hoover Press
Goode, E. (2008). Drugs in American society. Boston: McGraw Hill Higher Education
International Narcotics Board. (2001). 21st century challenges to drug law enforcement, UN. Web.
Lyman, M. D. (2007). Practical drug enforcement. Boca Raton: Taylor & Francis
Rasmussen, D., & Sollars, D. (1998). Increasing drug enforcement. Journal of regional studies 23(3), 220