Law Enforcement and Border Security with Mexico
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2010-03-24/law-enforcement-and-border-security-mexico
Secretary of State Clinton pushes for improved law enforcement and border security with Mexico. The recent Juarez murders of three people connected to the U.S. consulate fueled concerns about escalating drug-related violence. Drug trafficking, border control and U.S.-Mexico relations.
Guests
John Morton
assistant secretary, Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Francisco Gonzalez
Riordan Roett Associate Professor of Latin American Studies,
Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
Charles Bowden
author of "Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields," a contributing editor for GQ and Mother Jones
Eric Olson
Senior Advisor on US-Mexico Security for the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute, coordinates a major binational project on cooperation against organized crime
Michele Kelemen
NPR correspondent
Comments
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I don't understand why we keep asking the same people to solve the same problem. It's obvious that the current approach or problem-solving is not working so lets get some new perspective or leaders in our military, defense, etc. to try and solve the problem.
This reminds me of the doctor who doesn't really want to heal the patient, because then they wouldn't have an income. Defense keeps asking for more money to do what? Give money to other countries? Maintain a paycheck?
Let's start clamping down on drugs and guns here in the USA. Increase the punishment! A person who sells illegal arms should get the death penalty, right away not after years of appeals. A person who sells drugs should get the death penalty. It's basic psychology 101. People ask themselves in those situations if I act legally what's my punishment, murdered or death by the cartels for me and my family. If I act illegally what's my punishment, jail for a few years, if caught. What would you choose if you were these people?
Our rewards and punishment is so backward. There is no incentive for Mexico to clamp down on the gangs because then we will just give them more money.
Why doesn't Mexico and the US buy the entire cocaine crop directly from the Columbian farmers. The price is low at the source and it would eliminate much of the crop and the problem.
The arms used by Cartels in Mexico are weapons that are only available to government officials and military agencies. Hand gernades, gernade launchers and full automatic weapons are not available to the general public. A citizen cannot go to a gun store and purchase these types of weapons.
The weapons being used are not being stolen from peoples' homes or bought at a gun shows, rather they are stolen or bought illeagally from the Government.
The second amendment in place has no bearing on weapons being used in Mexico.
Thank you for your great programs.
Joey
I just pledged today to NPR and commented that NPR needs more debate. So THANK YOU for letting the re-legalize drugs argument be represented. I can hardly stand the Diane Rehm show because she and her guest usually are so smugly agreeing with each other.
May I make the point that most drug crime is from the business of drugs, not from the influence of using drugs. Corruption, drive by shootings, assassinations - those people are not intoxicated by anything but money and violence. Drug users may commit abuses, theft and DUIs but there are already laws against hurting others. Drug laws create powerful drug gangs, corruption and violence.
Legalize selling and use of drugs for adults, and lock up those who give drugs to minors.
Thank you again for showing BOTH SIDES of an issue.
guest host Steve Roberts: you're pronouncing Juárez wrong, there's an accent over the 'a' for a reason.
Also, you're pronouncing Bowden's name wrong. It's 'bow' as in arrow.
Anyway. Bowden's point needs to be underscored. The problem is that the government doesn't want us to take drugs.
The drug 'problem' is here because Americans love their drugs. It's a market. It's not going away. The reason there's violence is because it's illegal. Take away the illegality, and the people selling the stuff won't have to use violence to enforce their deals.
Make drug abuse a health problem, not a criminal problem.
I found Charles Bowden's comments to be sensible, practical, and knowledgeable of the situation in Mexico. His is a voice that many in our government should listen to.
I couldn't help but wonder at Secretary Clinton's assertion that the US would do anything to stop the drug wars, but then she answered "no" to the possibility of legalizing drugs. Obviously she will not do anything to stop the drug wars. The only thing that will work is clearly not even a point for discussion.
Steve Roberts: the term is NOT legalization - it is decriminalization. Make illegal drugs a medical issue in order to remove the inflated valuation and criminal aspects of the problem. There are plenty of other laws to handle the real criminal parts of the problem. This decriminalization solution has been proffered for 40 years, to my knowledge (although you could use alcohol prohibition as an earlier example), but it has no political backing due to lack of education, to special interests, and to political cowardliness. It is still the best and most reasonable solution, besides being the only one that will work (reduce unnecessary racially skewed prison populations; remove the source of demand; remove the financial stimulus). The war on drugs is a pathetic joke. I have helped produce several films about psychoactive drugs for the LEAA in the '70s to educate police, doctors and legislators of the effects, causes, treatment, recovery, and social implications of those drugs. I consider myself to be one of the most knowledgeable experts on this issue due to my research for those films. Even though you might not have my experiences, I find your use of the word legalization in this context on NPR to be ignorant and misleading. NPR and public radio should adhere to higher standards. Robert Hebert 520-803-9922 Sierra Vista, AZ
During the last 100 years the Mexican government has contrived to un-arm the population in order to achieve political stability.
After the 1910 Mexican Revolution, there were a succession of coups and counter coups until 1924 and the forging of the PRI by strong man General Plutarco Elias Calles (also known as the one party democracy theater for the benefit of Uncle Sam). The organizational chart was composed of trusted allies placed as state governors, accountable to the Presidente, and each state governor placed his trusted allies in charge of the Police and Justice Departments, accountable to him. These people would serve for six years, until the next Presidente was designated and he in turn would fill the ranks with his trusted allies and so on.
The purpose of the of the whole Government was to impede more social outbreaks. The reward for following the party line was plundering the state coffers. Part of the strategy to achieve this peace was to un-arm the populace.
As any member of the NRA will tell you, a controlled gun sales policy to the law abiding public, will only achieve a defenseless civilian population and well armed criminal faction. The criminal sector will find a supplier no matter how many gun bans you impose, especially if they have tons of cash. History has showed this to be true time and time again.
If arms were to be made available to the general Mexican public once again as before the 1910 Revolution, not only would the cartels have a much tougher time but the government corruption would also come to an end.
The present call to stop the flow of guns to the south is not a deciding factor in the war on drugs, it is a necessity of the Mexican government to maintain its power base over the Mexican people. Drug gangs in the USA have all the arms they want and there is no war in the streets of American cities.
Thank you very much for a great discussion on this very important and tragic topic. Thank you letting your guests say in public that the current policy of "war on drugs" does not work. I fully concur with one of your guests saying that drugs should be approached as a public health problem rather than the criminal justice problem. Listening to the discussion I could only wonder: "Did we not learn anything from the Prohibition? Why are we repeating the same pattern? Do not we know the outcome?" Our politicians from both parties seem to be acting like a person, whose only thought while seeing a swollen river is "dam it", while not even trying to ask, where all this water is coming from. Your guests offered a plausible explanation that the law enforcement of drug laws is driving the price high, what creates the economic incentives, which drive the trafficking and the violence. As simple as that. Have we not seen the same during the Prohibition? Do not we know that the law enforcement did not solve the problem then, while re-legalization of alcohol did? So why are we insisting on penalization of drugs despite massive evidence that it does not work?
The statement "there is no war in the streets of American cities" is not true. There is no war in affluent part of American cities. But there is a constant gang war in the concentrated poverty parts. If in doubt, Mr. Mayagrafix should go in person to any "bad" part of any large American city, take a walk, and count minutes he could walk down those streets before getting mugged or killed.
Concerning sales of guns to "the law abiding public", the statistics says that many domestic violence deaths occur because guns are on hand in the households. There is of course an answer to this inconvenient truth. Once the gun is used to solve a domestic dispute, the parties in question are no longer "law abiding" and they can be excluded from Mr. Mayagrafix's consideration. Those parties become "criminals", who by Mr. Mayagrafix's argument would obtain their guns anyway. This way or another, Mr. Mayagrafix's statement is a self-fulfilling profecy. You own a gun before using it? You are a "law-abiding" citizen who deserves a gun. Use your gun? You become a criminal, who would have obtained the gun anyway.
WTG Diane for finally having a program where the guests were allowed to discuss the greatest single generator of felony crime in America = Modern Prohibition. It was a breath of fresh air.
My experience as a street cop showed that the Drug War has been the most dysfunctional, destructive and immoral domestic policy since slaver and Jim Crow. Shame on you for not having had a single show on this topic.