The Police Made and Sold Crack in the 80s and 90s

Published Dec 14, 2024, 2:00 PM

In the second half of today's show we discuss how the Broward County Sheriffs Office made and sold crack to people in the 80s and 90s in order to arrest them. We discuss systemic oppression and how cases like this give us insight into just how much it can affect outcomes for individuals, families, and communities.

Keep on riding with us as we continue to broadcast the balance and defend the discourse from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. Welcome back to Civic Cipher. I'my host Ramsy's job.

He is Rams' joh I am q Ward. You are tuned into Civic Cipher.

Yes you are, and we got some more show for you to stick around for. You know how, there's like things that we talk about on the show, like systemic oppression, and we talk about mass corruption and you know, white supremacist institutions and all this sort of stuff that disproportionately negatively affects black and brown people. Well, I'm going to share something with you that is not at all crazy surprising that we found out so late. It is not crazy at all. Did you know that police made and sold crack to black people in the eighties and nineties.

I'd be willing to bet that this is not an isolated incident.

Oh my god, it's probably a tactic. But we're going to talk about that and so much more so we employ you to stick around to learn about that. But before we get there, it is time to Aba become a Better Allied BOBA On today's BBBA, sponsored by Friends of the Movement. You can sign up for the free voter wallet from fotmglobal dot com to support black businesses and allied businesses as well as make an impact with your spending. Again, that's fotmglobal dot com and this comes from BWWLA dot org or Black Women for Wellness. Black Women for Wellness is committed to the health and well being of Black women and girls through health, education, empowerment, and advocacy. They believe that good health is physical, spiritual, emotional, mental, and financial wellbeing. They believe in healthy communities where Black women and girls have the ability and resources to grow strong and sore. They believe that good health involves an integration of Western medicine and holistic health practices to create a better life. They believe in preventing illness through education, self empowerment, access appropriate treatments and interventions, and blending solutions that work for Black women and girls. They believe that the lifestyles or financial and educational status of Black women and girls must not matter in their ability to implement health decay decisions, or access to health services. Black Women for Wellness believes in the strength and wisdom of our community and allies They believe that they have the solutions, resources, and responsibility to create shifts and change needed to impact people's health status. They believe each of us must develop our own personal power, hold accountable and support acknowledged leadership, and most importantly, contribute to our survival and growth as a community. And you know, around here we support black women. We love black women. We believe that black women are as close to God as you can be on this planet. And in this moment, we are uplifting black women specifically this organization again, BWWLA dot org. Black Women for Wellness Again, that's BWWLA dot org. If you want to support them, hit that website, make a donation, learn more about them. Of course, we can't go too much into detail here because we only have a couple of minutes, but we thought that you would like to hear about this. Yeah, all right, the police made and sold crack to black people.

Sounds about right.

It's sad that it does.

Sounds about right. All right.

I won't hold you here.

We go.

This from the Associated Press. A Florida prosecutor says he will seek to vacate as many as two thousand, six hundred convictions of people who bought crack cocaine manufactured by Broward County Sheriff's Office for sting operations between nineteen eighty eight and nineteen ninety two thousand.

Six hundred.

And I don't know if you know this, I'm gonna continue reading, but do you know that the penalties for cocaine were different than the penalties for crack because they scheduled crack as a harder drug than cocaine, even though it's effectively the same thing. Crack is just for por people.

I'm sure that was intentional as well.

Oh yeah, because poor people that use crack tended to be black and they could impose harser sentences.

Important to point out, and this is something that you and I spoke about during the election, very very important to even when telling black stories and pointing out the just vastly different outcomes for black people disproportionate negative impact, it is also important to note that poor is just as important as maybe not just as important as it's up there, but very very important that these outcomes happen to poor people. And the reason why I say that is this, As you guys know, the entire purpose of this show is allyship building, bridges, growing alliances, strengthening alliances, and poor people that are not black somehow see black people as their enemies or adversaries or people who are just criminal by nature, and they help rich people smash their thumbs down on all of us, including themselves, because they see themselves as unharmed by these outcomes. All the people that abused crack were not black. They were, however, almost all poor. Very important piece of information to highlight.

I've actually seen.

Non black crackheads, quite a few of them, but that term has been associated with black communities so heavily. That and to be fair, it did impact black communities quite a bit, but it wasn't exclusively it was but you're, to your point, exclusively poor, almost exclusively poor, absolutely, And you know, before we because we do need to circle back to this, but I don't want to make this point right now. Human beings use drugs, right, It's it's a thing that happens. This is not a black thing, This is not a white thing. This is a human thing. This is not even a human thing. Because other creatures use drugs if they are able to get to it, right, I'm gonna share this before we finish this story. There was this experiment. We talked about this on the show. There was this experiment where they had lab rats, right, and forgive me because I'm just kind of riffing right now, but we talked about this. So all the data and stuff is in a previous episode. You're welcome to explore and find it or just look the story up by yourself. But basically, there was this experiment lab rats, and they put a water bottle that was just regular water in another water bottle laced with some sort of drug, right, And then they had rats in a cage and they studied the rats, and of the time the rats preferred the.

Water bottle with the drug.

Okay, they just.

Would bypass the regular water.

It was like, give me the drugs, right, And the scientists were confused because they're like, well, you know that they shouldn't always choose the drugs. Well, then they changed the nature of the experiment. They put the rats in a rat Disneyland where they had a hamster wheel to run on, and they had stuff to climb on, and they had other rats to play with, and they had, you know, places to run and jump, And then they put a water bottle with drugs and then a regular water bottle, and they found out that almost all the rats just drank water. And then the initial experiment, the one thing that they failed to anticipate is that a rat's natural state is not to just be in a glass cage with no prospects, with nothing to look forward to, with no promise of a better tomorrow, whatever it is that goes on in a rat's brain, and if they're in those circumstances, then it would lead to them trying to stimulate whatever escape who knows. I want to add to that that this country has a history of treating drug problems like a criminal issue until it affects white people in mass at which point in time it becomes a health issue, not a criminal issue. And so I need you to bear both of those things in mind when we talk about the last story about Jordan Neely with the synthetic marijuana quote unquote, and when we talk about this story here, because this story is it's an older story. This is a story for me and q's youth, you know, and a lot of our listeners.

Well, it happened in our youth. It happened in our youth.

Yet right it's been brought to public. Now, Yeah, it's just coming out now that this time, I don't want them to hear you say that it's an old story. It's not an old story. Yeah, it just happened a long time ago, a new story now. And I've shared this on the show, of course. But I'm from Compton, California. That's probably the place hit hardest by crack. I hate to compete in this way, but I'm from New jack City. Ooh, you're like, so here we are, right, yeah, But anyway, for those of you that haven't seen that movie, watch it and you'll understand. And it's actually it's in New York, but it's about Detroit, right, yes, yeah, there we go.

All right, so let me continue. The Florida Supreme Court ruled in nineteen ninety three that people couldn't be charged in cases where the sheriff's county Sorry, the sheriff's office made the crack cocaine, and undercover deputies then sold it to buyers who were arrested and charged. Broward County State Attorney Harold F. Pryor said Friday that while his office was receiving old was reviewing old records. Sorry, prosecutors realized that many people may still have criminal charges or convictions on their records because of the sting operation. Okay, so that's twenty six hundred people whose lives were impact in this one county. They're felling, whatever their story, they can't vote, permanently disenfranchised, and they're economic opportunities severely limited as a result of that, meaning that their families are communities, et cetera, severely impacted by the police. When we talk about systems, white supremacist systems and institutions, this is what we're talking about. And these are the ones that got caught. That's the only reason we know about them.

Okay, say the number again.

Two thousand, six hundred individuals, and if each one of those individuals impacts let's say, on.

Average, say one just to one person to be as yeah, just graceful as we can possibly only.

Have one mother, one child, one person that knows and loves me and that I know and love. Right, you're talking about five over five thousand people, five thousand, two hundred people impacted by this in this county, and they are majority black. Right, that limits their prospects.

Everyone listening knows that what Ramses and I just did was given intentionally beyond fair intentionally way beyond fair. And let me add to that, a person listening might hear that because they're listening for what they want to hear. Five two hundred people. That doesn't seem like a lot of people. This is just one thing that we're talking about by one agency in one community and one community at one time.

Okay, whatever happened before this, whatever happened after, what else happened during this time to disproportionately negatively affect Black people and communities, from the government all the way down to the landlord, and everyone in between, the people that hired, the people that promoted, the people that helped, the teachers that held students back, the tea. You pick a thing, pick a system, and if I pointed the flaws out to you, all of them, you couldnot tell me all of it's imaginary and recon You couldn't do that and reconcile it with the data. If you operate under the assumption that all men are created equal more or less. If you understand that genius can come from black people, white people, and everybody in between. If you understand that criminal behavior can come from black people, white people, and everyone in between, and.

Theoretically it is just as likely.

If you're one of those people that says, hey, black people should stop listening to rap music and all their problems will go away. I push back that you and say, well, white people should stop watching violent movies and then there'll be no more mass shooters. And then you would hear how stupid you sound. Right, there are systems in place. It's not rap me, it's not the systems, and we're talking about it right now, and we talk about it every week on the show for years now.

Okay, the same systems that will use a rapper's lyrics to convict but not a screenwriter's script. The same people.

But as you were, all right, okay, I'll continue. It's just one example of how the crack cocaine epidemic of the nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties led to harsh police practices and heavy criminal penalties.

Quote.

They were arresting people not for selling, but purchasing. Well the health is you like you read?

Yeah?

The Supreme Court said, if we make it and sell it, we can't be charged. Listen, Yeah, and then we are to believe that they only sold it to these people that they arrested. I want us to pause. Here, they made crack.

The police did made it. They didn't even they could have been fake.

They made actual crack. They made actual crack, sold it to people via undercover officers. So they made their officers drug dealers. A fell in a criminal conviction for us. No, you can't be arrested for that. And then we're to believe there was no profit turned here. They only sold the crack they made so that they could arrest people. And they would not dare start some sort of criminal enterprise and their profit from selling the crack that they're making. They would never do such a thing. They're good people. So you begin to see how deep corruption can go. Now, I don't that's simply speculation based on this art. Correct, Yeah, let's make sure we're clear about that part. Well, we're led to believe, yes, all.

Right, they were arresting people not for selling, but for purchasing, Ed Hogue, a defense lawyer, told The Sun Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale at the time. Hogue was a public defender who represented Leon Williams, whose appeal led to the state Supreme Court outlawing the quote. They had detention deputies posing as dealers. Hoak said they would sell it, and these poor people who were addicts were buying it, and they were selling it within the thousand feet of schools, so the penalties would be greater intentional Right now, Two, you have to wake up tomorrow and be black and know that in this country, so do I.

I want to drive home from the studio and know that.

I want to say something. We talk about race a lot on this show. We talk about how we're able to relate to each other, We talk about systems of oppression, we talk about a lot of different things. For people that listen to this show, we feel like or I feel like it's important to offer this from time to time. We recognize and respect the fact that not all white people behave in this way. Indeed, much of the progress that black people have accomplished, have achieved throughout our history in this country has been the result of allies and people who have been supportive of us. Right. We highlight stories like this to bring attention to systemic oppression and injustices. And we also know that the strongest allies out there listening don't need me to say this, but there are people who are still on their allyship journey and they feel deflated when we talk about, oh, white people do this and black people do that, blah blah blah whatever. I understand that. I think it's important to take a moment to say that we understand that we do have to speak in general terms sometimes. But as sad as this sounds, you know, Q made an excellent point recently.

There is.

You know what, I'll say it the way that you said it. If somebody disrespects your daughter, Q, at this point, on the other side of the most recent election, what can you do about it? You have to depend on somebody else being upset enough about it to take action, because at this point, based on the optics of this country, given the last election, nobody cares about how you feel about the way your daughter is treated. And it's in that space somebody else needs to care more than I do, because I'm not the author of my own justice in this country anymore I perhaps never was.

And the systems have failed me perpetually.

Right, and I'm at the mercy in a manner of speaking of allies people that will listen to us, tell the truth with data, not just our perspective and our thoughts. Tell the truth every week and say, you know what, that's not right, and people with empathy that can say, you know what, if I was in that position, I would want somebody to be supportive and to be aware and to reach out and say, hey, I listen. I have a neighbor. Her name is Nikki, that's all sha. And Nikki reaches out all the time and she says, hey, I listened to the show. Tell Q that I love him, stay strong. I'm so proud of what you're doing.

Thank you.

I learned so much every week. You know, one day we'll change this world into the world that we think.

It can be. And to Nikki, thank you for hearing and understanding my hurt, because that's what you hurt me, expressing hurt more than anger hurt.

And Nick is just a convenient example. There are hundreds of people around the country that reach out, you know, through social media or whatever else and say this.

But you know, I.

Recognize in respect that for some other folks it might be harsh when we're saying, hey, these are the systemic oppression, this is white supremacy, blah blah blah. And again, if you're just coming to this allyship conversation, you're hearing some harsh it may feel harsh to you, and it's not intended to be harsh. It's intended to be accurate. And so again I will rewind the police made and sold crack to poor people who were addicts so that they could arrest them, and they did it intentionally within a thousand feet of a school zone, so the penalties could be more severe.

And why would they want the penalties to be more severe around.

Because the prison industrial complex makes a ton of money, and if there are not enough prisoners in the then the investors of the privatized prisons don't make enough money. Add to that that prison labor is a kin to slave labor.

No, no, it's not a kin to right. Slavery was abolished unless as a punishment, as a punishment for crime.

Exactly.

Some of you are hearing this for the first time, and we understand that, and we hope that it moves you to action, not just to feelings, because no one cares about our feelings, is what we've learned on this path. No one cares about our feelings. We have to use this data and hope that it drives kinetic, actionable steps because expressing that we're upset does not change anything.

And then this affirms our humanity. And you know, just like people who are oh my god, the opioid epidemic, we're losing our children or ef we felt that during crack, oh my god, we're losing our but you know, the large.

Crack epidemic because of the people, the victims were poor and black, the country as large, it was a criminal endeavor, and the opioid epidemic is a healthy as a health crisis.

And so imagine me and Q waking up tomorrow black as we've been every day of our lives in a country that we feel hates us.

It's not our imagination, folks.

And so again for those who have listened all the way through, those people who count yourselves as allies, those people who feel like maybe by working together, by understanding, by listening, because that's the main thing. By listening and then sharing these stories with people that might disagree with you, and coming back every week and getting more stories and more data, we appreciate you. And in terms of this story, obviously we hope that these convictions can be overturned. I think this came directly from the article It's never too late to do the right thing.

So here's hoping.

But with that in mind, we got to leave it right there. So once again i'd like to thank you for tuning in to Civic Cipher. I have been your host, Rams this job.

He is Rams this jah, I am q Ward and we are grateful. Man. This is a admittedly tough time for us mentally, emotionally, you know, knowing what was at stake and what just happened to our country and you know where we might be headed as a nation. It's tough to continue to turn these microphones on and preach your message of hope and allyship and feel like something can be done about it. Because, to be flagrantly honest with you, everything we want to accomplish is going to be significantly more difficult now, and all of us have to dig in more and try harder and fight against greater obstacles. You guys, continue to support, like, comment, share, subscribe, stay locked in with us man, Civic Cipher everywhere, and until next week, y'all. Peace,