Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari

crossfire, it’s easy to see how there would be killing.
    Is that right? Is this why every crackdown triggers a turf war? I went away and read through the studies, trying to discover if what Leigh witnessed is part of a wider pattern. Professor Jeffrey Miron of Harvard University has studied the murder statistics 4 and found that “statistical analysis shows consistently that higher [police] enforcement [against drug dealers] is associated with higher homicide, even controlling for other factors.” This effect is confirmed in many other studies. 5
    So Leigh was beginning to realize that while she went into this job determined to reduce murder, she was in fact increasing it. She wanted to bust the drug gangs, but in fact she was empowering them.
    In her heart she suspected this had been the case for years—but she tried to avoid seeing it for as long as she could, until one night she was left with no choice.

    One job in policing is, everyone told me, pretty consistently the toughest gig. Ed Toatley—the union head who championed Leigh as she rose through the force—had to pretend, every day, to be a drug dealer among drug dealers.
    Back in the 1950s, Harry Anslinger had described what it takes to do this job. An undercover agent, he said, “must be a better actor than an Academy Award winner, 6 quick on his feet, even faster with his hands, and ten times as fast with his mind . . . one slip—one false word—could cost his life.”
    When they were being honest with themselves, Leigh and Ed admitted they were both adrenaline junkies. “There’s nothing like knowing you almost died [and] spending the next half hour saying—‘but I didn’t!’ ” Leigh told me, laughing. So she wasn’t surprised when, on the morning of October 30, 2000, Ed told Leigh how excited he was—he had finally been given the order to take out a midlevel dealer he’d been tracking for six months. He was given three thousand dollars to head to Washington, D.C., buy a kilo of cocaine, and do the bust. “This is like the pinnacle of my career,” he said.
    That night, Leigh got a call from the duty sergeant. He was brief. As Ed handed over the three thousand dollars, the twenty-four-year-old dealer didn’t hand him cocaine. He shot him straight in the head. “I didn’t give it a second thought,” 7 he said later in court.
    A few minutes later, as she was hurrying to the hospital, her major called her. “Leigh, this is Mike,” he said, and all she could say was: “Who the fuck is Mike?” She couldn’t process anything. When she arrived at the emergency room, more than a hundred police officers were there. Ed was the head of the union and a popular man. As soon as they heard, they all came. One of them put his hand on Leigh’s shoulder and said, “Leigh, man—he’s gone.” Her chief appeared and said: “This is going to be hard, but you got to be strong for the troops—they need your leadership right now.”
    The cops were waiting in line to see Ed’s body, and Leigh joined them. His head was wrapped in an improvised turban to keep his brains from spilling out. His body was still warm and soft when she touched it.
    Years from that day, Leigh would explain in a speech: “As I rested my hand on his chest, I said a prayer—for his family, his friends, and for myself. And as I did so, I felt the presence of every police officer who had lost [their] lives to the war on drugs. I felt the presence of my dear friend Lisa and every other victim caught in the crossfire of our failed policies. I felt them in that darkened hospital room with me. Their spirits were careening down from the walls. Their spirits were jeering and mocking me. Justice? Justice? What is this of your justice? It was,” she says, “my Damascus moment.” 8

    Leigh tried to get back to work, but this time she knew too much. It is hard to be Harry Anslinger with your eyes and your mind open.
    She had believed that by fighting the drug war, she was crushing