What, you might ask, do dangerous dirt bikes have in common with addictions? Just this: both of them are societal concerns that we expect law enforcement to fix, and are seemingly amazed when it fails at the task miserably, simply because we can’t “police” our way out of some problems.
Recently a group of about 100 dirt bikers mobbed up and tore ass all over the county, riding through Lakewood and damn near out to Avon Lake. Quite naturally citizens are outraged that these outlaws on wheels are becoming so emboldened they are now doing their stupid daredevil stunts in “good” neighborhoods. This shit definitely has to stop!
Really? Let me see law enforcement stop it.
I’ve been riding motorcycles for over 55 years and I’ve yet to see a cop car that can outrun a motorcycle, even one of those cheap-assed dirt bikes I so detest. As much as I’d like to see these clowns stopped, it simply can’t be done. When bikers see the flashing lights of police cars behind them they call it “Christmas.”
But what can happen (and the police, including the Ohio State Patrol, know this) is that when a dangerous chase is engaged in, a bad situation is made worse. The last thing the cops want is for some little old lady to wreck her car — and injures or kills herself — when she get’s startled or panicked by cops chasing dirt bikes all over the roadway.
The bikers will keep going after the accident, but the law enforcement officer has to stop and clean up the mess — and shoulder the blame for the chase that caused it. The lawyer for the family of the little old lady is going to tell the jury in the civil trial that she would still be alive today if the police hadn’t engaged in hot pursuit over a misdemeanor offense — and the jury is going to rule for the family of the deceased.
So what’s the solution? There is no perfect one, but a good place to start is to get behind Mayor Frank Jackson’s dirt bike track idea. Will it completely solve the problem? No. Will it help? Yes. All that has to be done is prize money put up for racing dirt bikes and riders will show up. And it really doesn’t need to be a lot of money. Of course, those charged with popping wheelies on the street will not be eligible to enter.
What about the cost? If the city loses one or two wrongful death lawsuits it will have paid for the cost of the dirt bike track a couple of times over. As for the location, how about back in the cut near Higbee and Holton Avenues? It’s a complete dead zone.
The bikers have the public by the short hairs on this one, and we might as well admit it and get with Mayor Jackson’s program.
Another area where law enforcement is — and has been for over a half-century — failing in a spectacular fashion is in addressing America’s continually growing drug crisis. A few days ago I heard Justin Herdman, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, on the radio talking about the efforts his office is making in terms of ramping up efforts to curtail the growing opioid and methamphetamine crises. He sounds like a very sincere man, but the fact is he’s an old-style drug warrior and believes we can arrest and prosecute our way out of the problem. He’s wrong. We can’t.
Interdiction, arrests and prosecution have never put a dent in the drug market. In fact, keeping drugs illegal is what the drug cartels actually want, since decriminalization would cause prices — as well as drug-related deaths — to fall dramatically.
He mentioned the major high-level drug conference that was held at Cleveland Clinic five years ago with great fanfare by his predecessor Steve Dettelbach. The venue was packed to overflowing as I recall, having arrived early to get a good seat. Every major player was there since the number of overdose deaths was beginning to shoot through the roof. After the conference, they grew even faster as if mocking the efforts of the best legal and medical minds to impact on the problem.
Herdman is planning yet another conference and I can only hope and pray that the focus of it will be on harm reduction — the only strategy that has proven to work all over the world where it’s been tried. But alas, we Americans learn nothing from history and little from other countries. Fifty years and counting of failed drug policies have only lead to mass incarceration, but we’re still going down that same rabbit hole. Why?
From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.