Morale Is Key to Local Police Fighting Drugs : Crime: The cocaine trade has made inner cities a prison for the law-abiding; freeing them requires everyone’s support.

The tactics and conduct of law enforcement are much-discussed topics today in Los Angeles. And I must emphasize that I do not want to weigh in on one side or another in this debate. The decisions that must be made here are local ones, and they must be made by the people of Los Angeles and their representatives. But because the Los Angeles area is a major drug-trafficking center, the effectiveness of law enforcement here is also of concern to the federal government.

The area is the base of operations for major Colombian, Asian and Mexican drug-trafficking organizations. It is also home to almost 80,000 street-gang members. And it serves as a staging area and nationwide distribution point for narcotics smuggled across the country’s southwest border and through the ports and airports of Los Angeles.

For these reasons, the President has designated Los Angeles as one of the nation’s five high-intensity drug-trafficking areas, qualifying it for special federal assistance. This fiscal year, the federal government will spend $187 million on drug-control efforts in Los Angeles.

So the morale, performance and reputation of law enforcement is important. If law enforcement in Los Angeles is beginning to suffer, we on the federal level must be concerned. If there is a weakness in our lines here, there will be great difficulty in reducing the supply of drugs in Los Angeles and throughout the country. The need for strong drug enforcement is as great now as it ever was.

The nature of the war on drugs is changing. The prevention message is reaching wide and deep, and greater numbers of Americans are turning away from drugs, or deciding not to try them. Since 1988, cocaine use has dropped 45%. In the long run, this is good news for the nation because with fewer experimental users cascading into the drainpipe of drug use, there will be fewer who end up in the sewer of addiction.

But these trends are not yet causing a substantial lessening of the load for law-enforcement agencies. Police, particularly those in our major urban centers, are still overwhelmed by drug crime. This is true because, despite the drop in new and casual users, there remains a large block of frequent cocaine users who will only kick the habit through incarceration, death or, if they have the will, through a tough treatment program.

These people use drugs so frequently and in such quantity that even a small number of them can support a criminal organization; 1.75 million people, the current number of users, can sustain the cartels. These frequent users commit violent crimes and cause social strife, shattering the security and safety of the law-abiding residents of our cities. Until this population somehow ends its drug use and ends its support of drug traffickers, our cities will remain under siege.

If there is a message to the people of Los Angeles, it is that local police departments will continue to face daily violence and danger. They need to be supported.

President Bush has taken on the issues of drugs and crime with such zeal because our children cannot learn, our families cannot thrive, our businesses cannot prosper if they are surrounded by crime and chaos. Without a foundation of safety and security, there cannot be freedom--this is an unchangeable law of human society.

This law of nature is nowhere more evident than in our cities. Many inner-city residents, particularly children and the elderly, do not share the same blessings of freedom that many of the rest of us enjoy. They are trapped in their homes and threatened by thugs. These thugs are qualitatively no different from the secret police in a dictatorship who use violence and threats to garner similar effects--to keep the population intimidated. Clearly, the greatest threat to the human rights of our urban citizens comes from criminals, not from the police.

Make no mistake, though, the police must serve as a liberating force to these citizens. And the first rule of a liberating army, of course, is to win support of the residents, to make certain that it is recognized as a liberator and not as another oppressor.

The tactics and methods of law enforcement must not alienate the very population that it was established to protect. But all should remember that the mission of the police does involve violent situations. In the overwhelming majority of such situations, the use of force is necessary, measured and used for the sole purpose of protecting the lives of innocent people.

If it is fair and accurate, news about these situations should be reported with a realistic understanding of the complexities and dangers of the task, not with hysteria.