To me, this a pretty damned powerful video. The guilt, regret, and introspection apparent in these former cops is striking — and admirable.

LEAP needs more attention. This is an organization of 5,000 current and former law enforcement officials who recognize the failure and the damage effected by the war on drugs. And it has grown to 5,000 from just five founding members a few years ago. Seems to me that that’s pretty newsworthy. So pass this video on. If you’re in a position to show it to a large group of people — students, Rotary clubs, civic groups, etc. — contact LEAP directly. They’ll send you a DVD. Better yet, book one of these guys to come speak in person.

If you’re a blogger opposed to the war on drugs, post this video on your website sometime in the next week. Let’s see if we can’t create a blogburst to get these guys some needed publicity.

Incidentally, the silver-haired ex-cop who sort of narrates the video (not the guy in the still frame — that’s Jack Cole, LEAP’s founder) will be speaking at the Cato forum on my paper next month.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 20th, 2006 at 8:17 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.