THE WAR ON DRUGS- THE BATTLE FOR YOLO
By Rob Gorman, Yolo County
Deputy District Attorney and
By Dave Rosenberg, Yolo County Supervisor, 4th District
The War on Drugs. How many times have you heard a law enforcement official
or a politician use that term? Is there really a “War on Drugs”? The
answer is yes. But why is the War on Drugs being fought in Yolo County? Simple.
Yolo County is inundated with all five major illegal drugs–methamphetamine,
heroin, marijuana, powder cocaine and cocaine base (known on the street as “rock
cocaine”)-- and Yolo County’s drug problem has reached epidemic proportions.
If you were to open the newspaper and read that since July 1998, 1,157 people in Yolo County had become ill from drinking from the county’s water supply, the population as a whole would demand that our government officials act immediately to find the source of the contamination, do whatever it takes to eradicate the problem, and take all necessary measures to ensure that this problem does not reoccur. In fact, our government officials would undoubtedly make cleaning up the water supply our number one priority in order to protect the public from further harm. You might even hear a government official declare that Yolo County is fighting a war on contaminated water.
Although this war on contaminated water is fictional, Yolo County’s War on Drugs is quite real. Since July 1, 1998, the Major Narcotics Unit of the District Attorney’s Office received 1,229 felony drug cases for prosecution. To date, those 1,229 cases have resulted in 1,157 people in Yolo County being convicted of felony drug-related offenses. This is an astonishingly high number of felony convictions, when you consider the following:
1. The Major Narcotics Unit of the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office is responsible for the prosecution of adult offenders, aged eighteen and older. Typically, juvenile offenders (under age eighteen) are not prosecuted by the Narcotics Unit. Further, not every adult arrested for a felony narcotics offense in Yolo County is referred to the Major Narcotics Unit for prosecution. Instead, those persons arrested for their first felony narcotics offense are referred to the general criminal division for prosecution and/or are enrolled in the Yolo County Drug Court program.
2. The most recent census data reveals Yolo County’s total population to be 160,000. If we eliminate the number of people younger than 18 from that figure, we are left with a population of roughly 100,000 adults in Yolo County. Out of this remaining 100,000 people, we can eliminate that segment of the adult population aged 65 and older, since only one person over age 65 has been convicted of a felony drug offense in the last two years. This leaves Yolo County with a population of 70,000 adults aged 18 to 64.
What does all this mean? Specifically, it means that since July 1, 1998, one out of every sixty people in Yolo County age 18-64 has been convicted of a felony narcotics offense. One out of every sixty! Or, put another way, fifty-two adults have been convicted each month of a felony narcotics offense. And, quite frankly, this felony narcotics conviction data reveals that the adult population of Yolo County is infected with a serious drug problem, and that problem has reached epidemic proportions.
So, once convicted of a felony drug offense, what happened to these 1,157 adults? Three hundred and seventy seven (377) of these defendants received a State Prison sentence ranging from 16 months to 14 years, with the current average State Prison sentence being 35.4 months. Of the remaining seven hundred and eighty (780 ) defendants, all are now convicted felons currently on felony probation, with seven hundred and sixty one (761) of those defendants having been ordered to serve a period of incarceration from between 90 and 365 days in the Monroe Detention Center prior to their release on Felony Probation.
As a Deputy District Attorney assigned to the Narcotics Unit, co-author of this article, Rob Gorman, prosecutes felony narcotics cases exclusively. He deals day in and day out with defense attorneys representing persons charged with felony drug offenses which occurred within Yolo County. He has his finger on the pulse of the narcotics activity that occurs in this jurisdiction. Yet recently, during the jury selection phase of a narcotics trial, he was reminded of just how widespread drugs are in Yolo County. The trial judge asked of the eighteen prospective jurors if any of them personally or if any of their family members had ever been charged with a crime similar to the narcotics offenses facing the defendant on trial. Nine of the eighteen prospective jurors informed the Court that members of their family had been convicted of felony narcotics offenses in the past, with five of those nine jurors stating that Mr. Gorman was the prosecutor who handled their family member’s case. These were nine people from our community whose lives had been affected by a family member’s drug conviction. Just think of the number family members affected by the 1,157 people convicted of narcotics offenses since July 1, 1998 in Yolo County. The number must be staggering.
Which brings us to our next point. Why do we continue to fight the War on Drugs in Yolo County? Quite simply, we continue to fight the War on Drugs because drugs have become a scourge on our society as a whole, and narcotics and narcotics offenders threaten our community’s livability and livelihood. For instance, studies have shown that upwards of 80% of all drug users have committed crimes in order to obtain their drugs. The criminal activity of the drug user includes everything from stealing from family members to perpetrating armed robberies in order to obtain money for narcotics. In addition, studies conducted in several large cities across the country reveal that illegal drug use played a part in over 75% of all domestic violence arrests. Due to the high number of “spill over” crimes that drug use and drug users perpetrate, we in government and law enforcement would be derelict in our duty were we not to continue to fight the War on Drugs day in and day out. It is our job, but more importantly, the law-abiding public demands that government and law enforcement provide a safe community in which the citizens live. And since drugs and drug users threaten our community, the elimination of drugs from our streets and the arrest of persons who choose to sell or use narcotics is the number one priority of law enforcement. Eliminate drugs and the crime that accompanies the drugs will diminish. Which brings us to our final point. We’re often asked if we are winning the War on Drugs. We believe we are. Proof of government and law enforcement’s success in the War on Drugs is evidenced by the overall decrease in the general crime rate. For instance, according to the latest FBI statistics, overall crime and specifically violent crime is on the decrease. Although many different factors could be attributed to the decrease in the crime rate (the Three Strikes law, the additional number of police officers on the street, etc.) We believe the stepped up effort of law enforcement in the area of narcotics interdiction and detection is largely responsible for the overall decline in crime. For example, if you have a drug user out committing burglaries and armed robberies in order to feed his habit and police arrest that drug user for a narcotics-related crime, that is one drug user off the street, yet it is also one burglar and one armed robber off the street as well. And since that drug user is now in jail, he cannot perpetrate any additional burglaries or armed robberies. Hence, the arrest of this one drug user has prevented future burglaries and armed robberies which he most certainly would have perpetrated in order to continue to feed his drug habit. All of which shows that when the police apprehend one drug offender, the spillover crime perpetrated by this drug offender is likewise eliminated. Taken to the logical end, if a community removes drug offenders from its streets, that community’s overall crime rate will decrease as well. It is no coincidence then, that with today’s stepped up narcotics enforcement and resultant increase in the number of felony narcotics arrests, there now exists an overall decrease in crime, especially violent crime.
The elimination of drugs from Yolo County is the goal of your local government and law enforcement officials. We know that where drug crime exists, violent crime exists. We are working day in and day out to provide the law abiding citizens of Yolo County a safe and drug free environment in which to live, work and raise a family. To this end, your local government and law enforcement agencies are fighting the War on Drugs on the streets of Yolo County every day...and we are winning.