Money laundering, illegal drug trade are most of the crimes that many gangs are capable of getting into and they are the highest number of cases the American police have to deal with every day. Drug trafficking costs the American government lots of money through, investigations, prosecution, and punishment plus the enactment of laws, treatment programs for addicts and covering their low productivity cost the government a lot of money (Kleiman,& Smith,1990). The drug dealers enjoy a lot of profits more than the government because they do not incur all the unnecessary expenses, they also help grow the economy because most of them cannot keep their drug money in cash. Instead, the drug lords have to invest their money in real estate, personal assets like planes, boats, cars, safe houses, they also have to improve the infrastructure for their business to flourish without hitches that are how they grow the economy.
The government has come up with several strategies to deal with the drug menace through enacting laws that help the law enforcement departments to address the problem head on by interdicting the supply route of the drugs and as a result recover some of the money spent chasing after the drug criminals. Investigating, prosecuting and punishing drug criminals is not easy most of the time the law enforcers have to go deep undercover and get absorbed into the process just to collect evidence. The traffickers and distributors always adhere to a particular code conduct which ensures they only share limited information with outsiders, this makes it tough for the police to gather evidence as outsiders. However even going undercover is a dangerous process and sometimes it ends up being fatal for some of them once word gets out there is a police officer among them (Moore, 1990).
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The drug menace becomes complex to deal with because of jurisdiction issues. Some of them work smart and move to states where police authority do not affect them. Alternatively, they can move where the laws against drug trafficking, distribution and money laundering are more lenient. To deal with the jurisdiction problem the government has set up multi-jurisdiction forces like the DEA who can prosecute from any state within the United States of America. The federal government well funds this working group and it useful in investigating and prosecute drug criminals. In the case study, the DEA together with federal, state and local authorities worked together to bring down the two drug criminals who grew their small drug business into a multi-million dollar company (Guerra, 1994).
The biggest problem with investigating drug dealers is that they always try to use their financial influence to make their cases go away; however, the government is working hard to equip its law enforcement agencies so that they cannot be swayed with money and let criminals go free. In the case of Terry and Demetrius, the law enforcers not only arrested the two instead they went for the whole organization, in most drug dealing companies the employees are taught on how to react in case the top officials are arrested the business has to continue(Moore, 1990). The others are part of the organization but with small roles but the employees still support the team pack and distribute the drugs all over the country.
The drugs are becoming a menace to society, destroying the lives of young people who should be involved in nation-building instead they become a non-productive lot. The drug traffickers always benefit from the business no matter their effects, most of them start small, but their determination and headwork make the succeed and grow their small businesses. The best way to deal with drug lords is to infiltrate their supply when the supply is cut out it affects their distribution, and later they lose clients. The clients are the most important that is why they work hard to protect their distribution strategies. Law enforcement agencies have to approach such cases with caution because most of the distribution employees are sworn to secrecy hence they safeguard their bosses with their lives. Agencies like the DEA are known for training their officers on undercover policing; this means they work with people from the community where the drug dealers live and infiltrate the business from inside out. That strategy has worked for a long time because none of the employees will risk their lives and give information to the police unless they are offered protection, and most of the time the criminals get to them even under government protection (Guerra, 1994). The infiltration strategy has to be tightly sealed because many officers put their lives on the line to go undercover and once they are manned the drug dealers make examples of them by brutally killing them to send a message.
This process means that even in an undercover operation the police have to ensure they share their collected information with few people until the process is complete because it is one thing to catch a criminal and another thing to ensure the case ends up in punishment. Most drug dealers have a connection even with high ranking officials therefore for a low-level police officer to close a case related to drug traffickers like Terry and Demetrius they have to have concrete evidence to ensure a conviction (Guerra,1994). Corruption is a major setback to dealing with drug criminals therefore with the issue of jurisdiction taken care of then zero tolerance to corruption it becomes a very easy to deal with the drug menace.
References
Guerra, S. (1994). The myth of Dual Sovereignty: Multijurisdictional Drug Law Enforcement and Double Jeopardy. NCL rev., 73, 1159.
Kleiman, M. A., & Smith, K. D. (1990). State and local drug enforcement: In search of a strategy. Crime and Justice, 13, 69-108.
Moore, M. H. (1990). Supply reduction and drug law enforcement. Crime and Justice, 13, 109-157.
