Pot-related deaths stir debate: Is loss of life too high a cost?

VIRGINIA BEACH

When Michael Phillips was gunned down in an undercover operation last week, he became the second local detective to be killed investigating suspected marijuana dealers in the past seven months.

The deaths have sparked debate about the enforcement of marijuana and other drug laws, with some activists arguing that continuing the war on drugs is just bad policy.

Others, including many local officials, say the killings confirm the dangers surrounding the drug trade.

“From the perspective of Mike Phillips’ widow, I’d say we’re worse off fighting the battle,” said state Sen. Kenneth Stolle, a former Virginia Beach police sergeant and undercover

officer. “From Mike Phillips’ perspective the day he was killed, I’m sure he felt it was a battle that needed to be fought, that the benefits outweighed the risk.”

“Drugs,” Stolle said, “are about the most evil thing in the community that I know of right now.”

A federal law enforcement official who works in Hampton Roads said that crack cocaine is the most frequently seized drug in this area.

Marijuana is the most used illegal drug in the nation and in the state, federal data show, but local authorities say they have not unduly focused on it.

Chesapeake Police Chief Kelvin Wright said marijuana and other drugs contribute to problems in society, particularly dangerous activities.

“It’s what I call the unholy trinity: guns, violence and drugs,” the chief said. “They all seem to go hand-in-hand.”

Portsmouth Commonwealth’s Attorney Earle Mob­ley said most drug dealers don’t just sell one substance. Instead, investigators often find a marijuana dealer to be involved with cocaine, heroin or Ecstasy, he said.

“Because there’s an element of violence that is connected with the distribution of drugs,” he said, “it just requires an aggressive prosecution of all of the offenses. …

From where I sit and where I see things happening, not to fight that fight would send the wrong message.”

But there are those across the country who think it’s a battle not worth fighting.

Peter Christ, a retired New York police captain and co-founder of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, said hearing of the deaths of Phillips in Virginia Beach and police Detective Jarrod Shivers in Chesapeake in January “breaks my heart.”

“These are my brothers and sisters in law enforcement,” he said. “I know what they’re going through. We’ve sent them off into this dangerous world, and we’ve made it more dangerous rather than making it safer.”

Phillips was shot three times in the torso as he attempted to buy a half-pound of pot in a parking lot in Green Run on Aug. 7. Two suspects, Ted Vincent Carter, 23, and Marshall Demetrius Moyd, 26, have been charged with first-degree murder in the killing.

Shivers was gunned down on Jan. 17 while serving a warrant to search a home suspected of containing marijuana. Ryan David Frederick, then 28, faces capital murder charges.

“What’s at the root of these deaths isn’t shoddy police work,” Christ said. “The root of these deaths is bad policy.”

Christ, who helped co-found the national group six years ago, noted that officers are sworn to uphold the laws and should continue to do that. But, he said, he and the more than 1,000 current and retired law enforcement officials in his group support a policy that would regulate, legalize and tax all illicit drugs.

Their view goes beyond that of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

 “I look at this as a prima facie discussion about why laws should change,” Allen St. Pierre, NORML’s executive director, said of the local officers’ deaths. “And I’m going to presume those that enforce the law will point to this as why they need to redouble their efforts.”

Pilot writers Kristin Davis, Janie Bryant, Duane Bourne, Jaedda Armstrong and Tim McGlone contributed to this report.

Shawn Day, (757) 222-5131, shawn.day@pilotonline.com