DIARY
Miami hishis city is in the frontline of the War against drugs'. In the company of the Miami Police, I took part in one of its skirmishes. This was an operation called The Sting. Forty officers in plain clothes gathered in the headquarters and were addressed by The Chief, a black man wearing a baseball hat and holding a can of Coca-Cola. They were watched by about six Miami businessmen and four journal- ists, including myself. Then we all piled into cars and drove off to an area called Coconut Grove. Here all drug dealers are black, so all the black policemen in our party pretended to be dealers. They pro- duced their box full of drugs — crack, cocaine powder and marijuana — and we photographed it, watched by a vast crowd. Then they stood about nonchalantly on the street and the journalists, businessmen and white policemen retired to a nearby observation flat or, in my case, to an unmarked car further down the street. Each bogus pusher carried a gun under his casual clothes.
The whole thing was so public that I could not believe that anyone was going to be stung. But after about an hour the first customer drew up and bought some crack out of his car window. As soon as he did so the policeman who sold it made a hand signal and we shot forward with lights flashing, and, with others, surrounded the culprits. They were a seedy white couple, the woman, who was driving, totally drunk. Police took them into the flat for questioning and then away to the cells. The next punter was a young white man. As soon as he saw what was happening he swallowed the drug in its plastic wrapper. Policemen jumped on top of him, shoving their hands down his throat to retrieve it and dragging him through the window of his car. They were mildly worried that he might die (he didn't). A man was caught trying to exchange a take-away pizza for some marijuana. He was a poor little fellow with sad eyes and a drooping mous- tache. The police thought it tremendously funny and kept trying to photograph him with the pizza, but he bowed his head in shame. He was bewildered by the light and noise and huge crowd and presumably knew that although the court penalty for his offence was very light he would lose his job. It seemed unfair for 40 policemen to pick on such a person.
A. s we sat in the car again, with two policemen called Carlos and Carlos, a message came on the radio that a Mr Big has been caught. We sped off to the next street. There was a plush station wagon with a repulsive-looking man standing be-
CHARLES MOO RE
side it smirking. He was young and black and gross with folds of fat strangely gathered on the top of his head. He wore pink shorts and looked prosperous. The police searched his car and found a bottle of brandy which they unscrewed, 'Oh dear,' they said, 'Driving with an open bottle. That's an offence.' They also found several cartridges. After much swearing, they let the man go. Carlos the elder said that this man was a substantial drug baron and particularly hated because he threatened policemen's lives and ordered them to be shot at. He was too grand ever to handle drugs, so they had never been able to get him. He made a striking contrast to the people stung that night, except for one interesting customer, a smart-looking man in an expensive Mer- cedes who bought crack. As he was arrested, the police pointed guns at him shouting, 'Stay where you are, motherf- er!' With him was a youth carrying a poodle with a ribbon in its hair. The man turned out to be Colombian, an illegal alien and carrying $3,000 in cash. I looked at his book of telephone numbers which he was carrying. Most of the numbers had no names written beside them.
The entertainment drew to a close at about 10 p.m. with ten arrests in five hours (sometimes as many as 90 people are arrested). Everyone behaved as in a film and, as in a film, the policemen seemed mostly to have hearts of gold beneath the equally traditional tough exteriors. They enjoy these evenings tremendously. But it strikes me that they could win such battles every day without coming any closer to victory in the war. The economy of several South and Central American countries depends on drugs. Drugs are easy to prepare for the market and to transport. They are the best cash crop in the world and the demand for them is vast. If America really destroyed the drug bases she would impoverish whole countries and bring about communist revolutions in them. It is now thought very scandalous that for years the United States ignored General Noriega's involvement in drugs because he was its most useful ally in Panama; but surely such alliances are inevitable if the US is to deal with the realities of power in Latin America. Drugs cannot be extirpated. Nor, however, can they be legalised. An end to drug prohibi- tion would abolish the criminal fortunes based on it, but it would be more than public opinion could bear. Although it would save a great deal of police time and public money, legalisation would be taken as a sign of society's moral collapse. So the present game will continue. The war is not expected to end, but its heroic battles are supposed to cheer people up. As it says in the Battle of Britain sketch, 'We need a futile gesture at this stage.'
Carlos and Carlos were fine examples of American assimilation. They were Cuban immigrants, the younger of them only 27 years old, but they were proud citizens of their adopted land with a strong distaste for foreigners. In 1980, Castro cynically emptied his prisons and lunatic asylums and put the inmates into the Mariel boatlift of people fleeing Cuba. Miami received 125,000 Cubans that year. In the opinion of Carlos the younger, 'All those boats should have been sunk.' Cer- tainly the Marielitos brought terrible crime to Miami, but on the whole the settlement of hundreds of thousands of Cubans has been one of the great immigrant success stories with which America abounds. The Cubans are patriotic, hard-working, freedom-loving and have built much from nothing in an amazingly short time. The immigrants with the worst plight at present are the Nicaraguans. About a quarter of a million of them have fled poverty and Sandinista persecution and arrived in America (half a million more escaped to other countries in the region). While the administration is unsure about its policy towards Nicaragua these people cannot be granted the refugee status of the Cubans. Nor, except in rare cases, are they de- ported. They are in limbo and with little help beyond the brave efforts of the tiny Nicaraguan-American Foundation. Given world opinion's sentimentality about the Sandinistas I fear there will not be much public charity towards the growing army of their victims.
For years the friends of Wallace Arnold have counted it a rare privilege to be able to catch a glimpse of his commonplace book. Wallace, for all his distinction as a man of letters and man of action, is a very private person. So it is with great pleasure that I announce that he has been per- suaded to share his thoughts with The Spectator's readers. The first draught of good sense and good writing can be drunk next week.
Previous page
