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SAN FRANCISCO
POLICE AND PEACE OFFICERS’ JOURNAL
(of the State of California) –
Feb. 1929
“Narcotics” By Judge Charles W. Price of Los Angeles
Click Photo To Enlarge
Narcotics and evils of drugs has been given a lot
of space in our newspapers and this month we print the address on "Narcotics"
made by Judge Charles W. Fricke of the Los, Angeles Superior Court, to the
members of the State Peace Officers' Association of the State of California, held
last November in San Bernardino.
HON. CHARLES W. FRICKE: I don't feel the least
bestrained here. I rather thought
when I was in the hotel this noon that I was probably running for public
office-I was shaking hands with so many fellows.
I think I am personally acquainted with a larger number of your
Association than I am with my Bar Association.
I had the honor and privilege of addressing your Convention at
Bakersfield two years ago, and regretted very much my inability to be with you
last year. They have left me alone
there on the Superior Court bench. I
have been enjoying myself, but it is hard to get away.
You know there are so many fellows who are always polishing the doors of
the penitentiary that it keeps us busy giving them the privilege of entering.
I
claim to be the discoverer of an important principle of criminology.
You probably remember reading in the papers where the doctors have
discovered "vitamin A, B, C, D".
I have discovered something similar-"put 'em in and keep 'em
in". And particularly I want to apply that to the drug peddler,
and I want to say a few words to you about the drug situation.
I don't think there is a being more contemptible, more despicable, more
worthy of being put on the inside of the penitentiary and put there for life
than the narcotic peddler, I have been interested in the narcotic question for a
great many years. We have succeeded
in organizing in Los Angeles what is known as the 'Pacific Coast Research
Association in Narcotics". We
have found that over 29 per cent of the men in the Federal Penitentiary at
Leavenworth, Atlanta and McNeils Island are there for violating the Volstead
Act; a large number of them are put there for violating the postal laws,
and a large number are put there for violation of the automobile law.
We on the Pacific Coast are not so closely contacted with what back east
we would call a hophead stickup man, the cocaine crazed highwayman who goes out
and commits a robbery and shoots down the robbery victim without the slightest
compunction, just as if he was kicking aside a little cardboard box that was in
his way. We
on the Pacific Coast here, however, have a little problem of our own, and that
is the marihuana problem. Down
in southern California, and particularly in the more southern counties of the
State, we have about twenty-five per cent of the narcotic addicts and the
marihuana addict. Marihuana
drives the individual who uses it wild, and he wants to go out and raise
hell in general, and if somebody gets in his way he is apt to get slapped down.
For illustration---in my opinion, if a hophead or
a marihuana addict started down the main street he would knock women right and
left, disregarding anybody's safety.
As a police problem, narcotics should be interesting to you.
From
every possible source that our Association could get figures, we found it was
almost unanimous opinion that the average addict requires about eight grains of
narcotics per day. A larger portion
of them may use morphine. Some make
a little cocktail out of it, but the average price that that drug costs the
addict is a dollar a grain. By a
strange freak of our State law and our Federal law---and I don't hesitate to say
I consider both of them fool laws---a doctor cannot treat a narcotic addict and
give him narcotics for more than thirty days, and we know you can't cure an
addict in thirty days.
Now,
any one who has never used or been addicted to narcotics can't conceive the
mental state of the narcotic addict who needs that drug.
His need for it is far greater than the need for food or water; the
craving for it is much greater than the craving for tobacco or anything else.
In addition to that, the morphine addict knows that if he does not get
his drug inside of twenty-four hours he is going to go through the tortures of
hell. Knowing that situation he is
going to get that drug. His average
requirement of the eight grains per day is going to require an average of eight
dollars a day over and above his living expenses.
You know the average man can't earn eight dollars a day, and there is
just one other thing a man gets his money from and that is by illegitimate
pursuits. We have a recent
approximation of what this narcotic bill is costing the State of California
alone. Our estimate for California
has been that we have five thousand addicts in this State.
Captain Luckenbach of the State Board of Pharmacy insists that that
figure is all wrong---that there are at least five thousand addicts in Los
Angeles alone. He says there are at
least two thousand in Hollywood alone. If
you will estimate five thousand addicts for the State of California, that the
average addict has to spend only five dollars per day for narcotics, you have
seventy-three millions every year that is being thrown into the cesspool for
narcotics, and it would be very much better, of course, if that money was thrown
down in the hole, for that would be the only loss.
But, we have more than that, an average of about twelve hundred of them
in jail every day. And take the entire overhead of the jail---at present we find
that runs just about a dollar a day-and we have got $438,000 more that the
addict is costing us. Then we have
the thefts which the addict commits in order to procure the drug---and that is
the only way a large percentage of the addicts can get their drug.
An ordinary husky intelligent man can't earn, over and above eight
dollars a day enough to live on. Just
figure the chance of a narcotic addict, wrecked in health, wrecked in strength,
lack of confidence, lack of the finer sense which human beings should have, and
figure his change of earning that eight dollars a day over and above his living
expenses.
I
think you will say I am conservative when I say if he spends for drugs
seventy-three million dollars a year, I think five and one-half million dollars
of that is obtained through a means of theft and other depredations, to give
them that term. We have to maintain
police and especially direct our attention to cleaning up the situation, and I
know how the police officers of California have worked, and how hard they have
worked, but, boys, you know just as well as I do you have just began to scratch
the surface. The time we get the
little fellow, we never get the wholesaler, and I would like to see somebody
that ever got an importer of it. We
know that a terrific amount of drugs is being carried into the United States.
We know ninety-five per cent of the drugs taken into the United States
are smuggled in. Last year in round
figures fifty tons of morphine got in, and that doesn't count the heroin, that
doesn't count the opium, that doesn't count the marihuana.
I estimated it cost the State of California pretty
nearly two million dollars for the time and salary, equipment and so forth, that
is necessary to handle the arrested addicts. The loss in earning power of the addicts is difficult to
estimate, but very conservatively we can say he has lost fifty per cent of his
earning power which, on the basis of the other figures I have given you, would
be a little bit over six millions, and the entire total, taking these figures
respectively, narcotics are costing California twenty-one million dollars
according to the Research Association figures.
Perhaps you think that is exaggerated.
Well, gentlemen, Congressman Porter is not a man who rushes wildly into
print with rigid statistics. He is
conservative. And Congressman
Porter has put California down for thirty-one millions instead of twenty-one
which I estimated. I don't know of
any one particular criminal who is more difficult to apprehend than the narcotic
addict, unless it be the peddler. They
are secretive, suspicious and the peddler is generally difficult to contact with
by reason of the facts he knows---at least in Los Angeles County, and I think in
any. other county, if he ever gets before a Superior Court Judge, there is just
one place he is going to go. I am
very proud to say, gentlemen, I don't know of a case coming before the Superior
Court of Los Angeles County for the last live years where a man convicted of
peddling narcotics did not go to the State Penitentiary.
Considering
the tremendous use of narcotics, considering the fact that the use of narcotics
is on the increase, I would like to, if I may, urge upon this Association, its
individual members and officers representing the separate departments, that a
special effort be made to get after the addicts. And there is something else that you can do, something that
you alone can do, and that is something along additional lines.
By that I mean this, large, mass of people have no conception as to what
a narcotic addict is, what sort of a menace he is to himself and others, and of
the results the narcotic addict may be to the community.
Now, don't get the idea that I am a hard-boiled
prosecuting officer. I believe
there are cases on which probation is the remedy.
I believe there are cases in which the penitentiary is entirely too
severe. Remember, a few years ago
if any of you carried a black jack you were guilty of a felony for which you
could be given no probation. Unfortunately
in somebody's enthusiasm a bill is sometimes passed that sometimes does not work
just exactly as it should. I think
some of our laws at the present time with reference to some types of criminals
are imposing penalties too severe. But
I will say this, gentlemen, if I am ever unreasonably lenient I hope somebody
will come and tell me about it, I don't want to be; and if I am ever
unreasonably severe, I want somebody to tell me about it also.
I
don't want to take too much of your time. As
a suggestion to you, I ask you to work out for yourself this narcotic
situation-clean up the addict. I
wish every one of you could come back to the Convention a year from now.
The head of the State Narcotic Squad said to me not so long ago,
"Charlie, I am in a hell of a pickle." I said, "What is your
trouble now?" "Well," he said, "I made so many arrests of
peddlers last month that the Chief said I have got to do as good this month,
and, Charlie, they ain't here." And that is the thing we would like to
hear. Not long ago, I, had a man up
for forging a prescription for narcotics. He
said, "Why, they got this town so cleaned up there are no narcotic
peddlers." And I am glad to hear that, because it means we are getting the
peddler eliminated.
There
should be something done by the Legislature to remove that restriction on a
doctor which permits him to handle an addict for only thirty days.
The addict should be given a fair break.
Something should be done with these addicts for the purpose of getting
them off the drug. Some of you may
be wondering, how about that treatment given to some addicts in jail we heard
about two years ago. Didn't you
treat some in jail and they were cured? The
newspapers said they were cured, but they were not, those fellows were all put
in the County Jail and they were waiting for probation, and they were so sure
their probation rested upon the cure, they said they were cured.
However, a check-up showed us they were not cured at all.
As a matter of fact you cannot cure an addict in twenty, thirty, or
ninety, or a hundred days, even with veronal.
I feel this way about this narcotic situation, and I don't think that I
should be accused of being hard hearted or cold brooded.
I believe society is entitled to be protected against every type of
individual that preys upon society. We
have been getting so much sob-sister stuff for the one who is in the County
Jail---nobody seems to think that there are millions of people on the outside
who are to be considered. It is
only a very short time ago that I had before me Johnny Hawkins, University of
Southern California football star, who committed a series of burglaries.
Somebody discovered a bump on the head, and of course, he must be crazy,
so Johnny Hawkins came in and plead guilty and asked for probation.
He said he didn't commit as many burglaries as the officers said he did,
he said he had only committed twenty-seven.
He was supposed to have gotten this bump on the head at a football
game---that was proven to have been there before the game.
We also dug up a lot of things we didn't make public, out of
consideration for the Hawkins family. While
I had that case under consideration, I received no less than fifty letters, I
was stopped on the street, and had many telephone calls all begging for
probation for Johnny Hawkins. But
there wasn't anybody came up and said, "Give him what he has coming to
him." But we have a mighty good bunch of people just the same, and the
evening I sent Johnny Hawkins to the San Quentin Penitentiary, people began to
tell me things I had done were the things they considered right, and it made me
feel pretty good. Every effort
seems to be not to help the law enforcer, but to help the defendant, and once in
a while when some police officer makes a mistake or does something he should not
do, the entire police force is damned for it.
I
am satisfied, gentlemen, from intimate acquaintance with the police force of
this State and the police force of other States and other cities that the
average integrity, intelligence and good citizenship among police officers is
just as high as among the members of the Bench and Bar.
I consider myself a kind of side member of this Association.
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