Originally Posted by
Bunny Colvin
Cause this drug thing, this ain’t police work. Naw, it ain’t. I mean, I can send any fool with a badge and a gun up on them corners and jack a crew and grab vials. But policing—I mean you call something a war and pretty soon, everybody gonna be running around acting like warriors. They gonna be running around on a damn crusade, storming corners, slapping on cuffs, racking up body counts. And when you at war, you need a smurfing enemy. And pretty soon, damn near everyone on every corner is your smurfing enemy. And soon the neighborhood that you supposed to be policing, that’s just occupied territory.
[…]
Look here, the point I’m making, Carver, is this: soldiering and policing, they ain’t the same thing. And before we went and took the wrong turn and start up with these war games, the cop walked a beat. And he learned that post. And if there were things that happened up on that post, whether they be a rape or robbery or shooting, he had people out there helping him, feeding him information. But every time I come to you, my DEU Sergeant, for information, to find out what’s going on out there on them streets, all that came back was some bulltit. You had your stats, you had your arrests, you had your seizures. But don’t none of that amount to tit when you talking about protecting a neighborhood, now, do it?
You know, the worst thing about this so-called drug war, to my mind--it just, it ruined this job.