
The Common Cure for Heroin Addiction Is Also a Magnet for Police Harassment - Petiver
http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnknefel/how-police-harassment-at-methadone-clinics-makes-quitting-he
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imroot
This type of activity isn't limited to major metro cities -- it's happening
(with surprisingly frequency) in the midwest. Cincinnat/Hamilton County is
notorious for doing this type of thing, but instead of with Methadone, it's
with Suboxone; it's a drug that blocks the detoxification effects of heroin.

The police are under pressure to make more Heroin arrests -- so much so that
they're targeting people who may or may not have a criminal history and asking
them if they know anyone who has some Heroin for sale -- and offering to give
them up to $500 if they do. For most residents of Hamilton county, $500 is a
fair amount of money....and they always 'know' someone who 'knows' someone who
can supply the drug...so they'll say yes (and then get arrested for
trafficking).

This really boils down to a lack of good mental health and health care. I have
two friends who are struggling with a Heroin addiction -- one fell off of a
roof while working, and the other just can't cope with her problems; if we had
better and more affordable health care (and while I support the ACA 100%, I
still think we need to move to single payer healthcare), I don't think either
of them would be addicted to the drug now.

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fnordfnordfnord
>This really boils down to a lack of good mental health and health care.

And a lack of ethics at the police department.

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saraid216
Saintly police officers do not cure heroin addictions.

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mtVessel
But shitty policing does?

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saraid216
That certain provides the mental health benefit of having someone to blame for
all your problems, yeah?

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SwellJoe
I was surprised to see a Buzzfeed link on the front page of HN, and my initial
thought was, "Really? How did this happen?"

But, this is a surprisingly well done piece. Maybe the dude who started
Buzzfeed wasn't really bullshitting us when he said he didn't want to just
make a linkbait site. This is article actual journalism on a level comparable
to much more "respectable" sources. I'm impressed, and I hope this is a trend.
If Buzzfeed uses their massive facebook click machine for good rather than
mindless entertainment, I'll be even more impressed.

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skue
Had the same reaction and even pulled up the BuzzFeed home page, wondering if
they had refactored their style. Nope! The main page is still full of crappy
linkbait lists... but here's hoping they do more articles like this.

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kyleblarson
It's sad that my immediate reaction upon reading this headline is "what ISN'T
a magnet for police harassment these days?".

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swombat
More to the point, is there any thing that is a repellant for police
harassment? I can think of a few things, but generally not easily achieved
(e.g. large amounts of money or power or celebrity status)...

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proveanegative
Social cohesion is one possible one. For example, if you lived in a small
community where the police officers knew you personally since childhood you
would, on average, be less likely to be harassed by police.

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JoshTriplett
As long as you meet all the social mores of that small community, as evaluated
by your local busybodies. Otherwise, you're likely to be pervasively harassed.

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proveanegative
That, sadly, is too often true. The only solution I see to this problem is
allowing lots of different communities to exist with different sets of mores.

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JoshTriplett
That's a useful condition, but it ought to be completely unrelated to law
enforcement. You shouldn't be required to live around people who look and
think and act the same as you do to receive equal treatment by the law.

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proveanegative
While I agree with you that it ought to be a separate issue I strongly doubt
the separation is ever achieved in practice. Actual policing and "policing" of
human behavior, looks and other norms appear to me to be inextricably linked.
I'm sorry to single out this instance in particular but reinforcement of the
local mores happens even through seemingly innocent behavior like your ought-
statement above, which I happen to agree with but some people might not have,
especially in the past. Police officers, persecutors, judges, etc. are
affected by their own set of ought-statements in work as well as in life. (And
the effect is exacerbated when you implement trial by jury.)

On my part, I cannot come up with one historical example of people generally
satisfied with how significantly different outsiders to their community
policed them. I have come to think it's more or less an inevitability and the
best we can do is to make it possible for people to freely move to where they
find the mores agreeable.

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cubano
The idea that methadone is a "cure" for heroin addiction is beyond ridiculous.
In many ways, it is more habit-forming then H itself.

For almost all the addicts I've ever hung around with, it was nothing but a
stop-gap to be used when your money wasn't right.

Also, with the availability of prescribed suboxone, the whole clinic-thing
became as much a social meeting as anything else.

Cops are looking for easy busts to pad their arrest numbers for promotions and
raises, and trolling the clinic beat is an easy, safe way for them to achieve
this, as pathetic as it is.

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skue
The headline should have called it a "treatment" rather than a "cure," but
methadone is a legit treatment. Agreed that getting folks on suboxone would be
even better, but from a public health perspective it's still preferable to
switch heroin addicts to methadone because it's safer and - by being dispensed
freely - can reduce drug-related crime.

~~~
manicdee
Is methadone safer due to potency vs dose size, or unreliability of heroin
supply?

Would quality-controlled heroin be as safe?

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joesmo
I think the only way to get rid of police harassment like this and in many
other cases is to remove reasonable suspicion as a cause for stopping and
searching people. It's clear to anyone who has ever had dealings with the
police that the police are not reasonable and neither is reasonable suspicion.
It's also clear from this article that New York (and undoubtedly many other
places) have an excess of police if police are harassing law abiding citizens.
The problem is that we give police way too much freedom to hurt innocent
people, power which they do not need to be effective. The only way we're going
to reign in this power is to change the fundamentals of our laws. Police will
never voluntarily give up their power. We must take it from them. We must
proactively shrink the needless police force. New York is a really great
example of a city that obviously has orders of magnitude more police than it
needs to enforce its laws as evidenced by the recent police refusal to do
their jobs and arrest people not having a negative effect. It's still amazing
to me how ignorant the majority of people in this country are to police
actions, though to be fair, a lot of that ignorance is willful and based on
racist notions. To me, it is unfathomable that people do not warn and teach
their children to avoid and fear the police as they do in most of the rest of
the world, despite us having one of the most despicable law enforcement and
police forces in the world.

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yaddayadda
> I think the only way to get rid of police harassment like this and in many
> other cases is to remove reasonable suspicion as a cause for stopping and
> searching people.

As a driver, if you see someone _erratically_ accelerating and decelerating,
do you not wonder about the state of their mind _as it relates to their
ability to drive_ , and in particular how their erratic behavior may cause an
accident? While I go out of my way to avoid being near such drivers, I do
still hope they get pulled over. I don't care if the reason for their erratic
driving is due to being on the phone (illegal in several states), a bee flying
around the vehicle (distracted driving; although I certainly hope the officer
wouldn't give a ticket), or the poor person was having a heart attack
(hopefully the officer can call for medical assistance and in the meantime
provide CPR). In other words, there are good reasons to enable stopping
someone when officers do have a reasonable suspicion.

The counter-point is that there is frequently conscious discrimination or
implicit bias, as illustrated in the article. One way to deal with this, that
was being used over 20 years ago on a military base where I was stationed, was
a no-go parameter around the bars on base. Except when explicitly dispatched,
the military police were not allowed to be within the no-go perimeter (about
1/2 mile if memory serves) around the bar around closing time (like 30 minutes
before and after). There's no reason a similar policy couldn't be put into
place around methadone clinics.

From the sounds of the article, in addition to dealing with discriminatory
reasonable suspicion, there's also a desperate need to more fully educate
police officers and judicial officials. For example, just having methadone
shouldn't qualify as a DUI and the case discussed in the article indicates
there was a systemic failure.

~~~
joesmo
Granted there does need to be some balance. Perhaps reasonable suspicion can
lead to a reasonable stop: no more than five minutes. And never a search,
regardless. In the article, stops of over an hour were mentioned. That's not
reasonable in the court's opinion even as it stands now. Honestly though, I do
not see the situation improving until the courts essentially reverse
themselves and realize what horrific mistakes they've made in regards to the
fourth amendment in the past. And while I'm being honest, I don't see that
ever happening. I like the idea of a no-go zone, but while that might solve
specific instances of abuse, it will not address the systematic abuse that the
police have created in this country. Perhaps if we had a separate police to
police the police instead of foolishly allowing them to police themselves we
could reach some justice. This is also something that I do not see happening
in this country as most people do not realize how horrific the police really
are because they're white and will never experience it first hand. It's sad
living in a society devoid of justice.

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tomjen3
Man this kind of shit makes me so fucking angry. What part of to protect and
serve do these police not understand?

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hga
It's been replaced by what I call the police-judicial complex. As real crime
has massively dropped over the years (demographics, as much as anything else),
well, it wouldn't do to lay off a proportionate number of police, judges and
their support staff, now, would it?

Especially with the press' "if it bleeds, it leads", plus of course there
always being high crime hot spots messing up with the public's perception of
crime.

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Spooky23
This is the police hacking their KPIs (ie Compstat). Heroin is a hot topic in
New York, now that winter and the pandering opportunity snow offers will end
soon, Heroin is a big priority all the way up the chain to the governors
office.

They need to get arrests to avoid their Captain getting put before an
inquisition at HQ. When that happens to him, the joy flows downhill. So they
get more arrests, and the paper pushers are happy.

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vezzy-fnord
Another drug used for similar purposes that both figuratively and literally
has an ardent religious following to it, is ibogaine, with one of the most
famous 80s hacker/counterculture figures Patrick K. Kroupa having since
devoted much of his life to it:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrament_of_Transition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrament_of_Transition)

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zackangelo
Vice did a great segment on Ibogaine in their first season on HBO:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkkMhKEfOqw#t=919](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkkMhKEfOqw#t=919)

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adanto6840
Is there an EFF or similar type "watchdog" group that could potentially get
involved here at a more grass roots level?

Makes me sick as well and it isn't obvious to me as far as what would be
effective steps to take to begin curbing the behavior... Especially given that
those being preyed upon are unlikely to have the means to defend and protect
themselves legally.

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elcct
They don't want people to quit because that will mean lost profits and time to
get into some serious work than harassing vulnerable people.

