William P. Estoffery came into court with a record of ten specific narcotics convictions, but the United States District Court gave him eight months to three years, which meant he could be back on the street in three months. One of his previous convictions was for possession of counterfeit prescription blanks.
Here is another sample of the judicial road-blocks erected against enforcement officers who arrest dope peddlers in the capital:
Constitutional rights to privacy also give a defendant protection from illegal police raids on homes other than his own, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled recently.
The court made the ruling in reversing the conviction of Jesse W. Jeffers, Jr., on narcotics dealing charges.
Jeffers, 27, Negro, was found guilty in Judge Alexander Holtzoff’s court on testimony that police, without a search warrant, raided a room at the Dunbar Hotel and found 19 bottles of cocaine he allegedly had hidden there.
Jeffers lived elsewhere in the hotel, but the room was rented by relatives of his.
Setting a rare principle of law, the Appeals Court held evidence of the cocaine cache should have been excluded from the case because the police raid was illegal. It pointed out the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment specifically bans illegal searches of a defendant’s home, and said the principle should be enlarged to cover illegal raids on “premises that were not his.”
Judge E. Barrett Prettyman, in a dissent from the majority opinion, said “I do not see how an individual’s rights can be invaded by Government seizure of ... unstamped narcotics, not on the individual’s person or premises.”
He emphasized the case “is important in the enforcement of the narcotics laws.”
The curious part of the whole affair is that the defendant admitted the untaxed, unstamped dope was his. In fact, he demanded its return from the government.
In another of its feats of legal legerdemain, beyond the poor reasoning of a couple of reporters who didn’t graduate from Harvard Law, the august court said to the defendant in effect: “Possession of dope is illegal, so you can’t have it back, though you didn’t commit any crime when you had it before.”
Try and figure that one out.
Shortly thereafter the Appeals Court again overruled the same judge in another narcotics case and ordered a new trial for Clarence Butler on the grounds that Holtzoff’s “facial expressions” were prejudicial.
An official memorandum of the United States Treasury Department sets out facts as follows:
Since early in 1946, the Bureau has experienced repeated delay in obtaining prosecution of its cases in the District of Columbia. In numerous trials where out-of-town agents were witnesses the Bureau had to bear the expense of bringing them to Washington for testimony. Repeatedly, after the agents arrived, the hearings were continued. The Bureau could not stand this gaff and had to “stop narcotic enforcement in the District of Columbia.”
Dope cannot be manufactured locally. The Washington wholesalers must get their supplies from the international monopoly. The general practice in other cities is for the organization to deliver the wholesale lots to localities where they are to be consumed, but in the case of Washington the wholesale jobbers go to the distribution depots in other cities and pick up carload lots.
All narcotics in the United States are controlled at the top by a tight ring of evil men who, in turn, issue state and territorial rights to middlemen. Washington merchants are ordered to make their purchases in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, but mainly in New York.
Marijuana is brought up directly from Mexico, but much inferior quality reefer seed is planted on farms between Washington and Baltimore and in Virginia.
The local dope set-up is largely controlled by Negroes, though Chinese also are active in the trade and have become more so since the Communists took over China. The two tongs frequently import their own. At this writing Red China has 500 tons of opium for sale abroad. This is equal to the world requirements for medical and scientific needs for more than a year. Chiang Kai-shek prohibited the production in China in 1934. The Communists have revived Jehol and Manchurian opium cultivation, and are reopening Tientsin dens. The tongs have not been adhering of late to the agreement which limited them to noncompetitive sales. Both are selling _pin yen_ (opium) and _bok for_ (heroin). Police believe the recent but short-lived tong wars on the West Coast were attributable to breaches of the basic compromise, plus efforts of Chinese Communists to take over the tong dope distribution machinery.
Occasionally, when sources of supply are temporarily cut off, or when the Italians are able to offer a more favorable price, the Chinese Syndicates send a man to buy directly from the Mafia. This dope is stored in a warehouse near 108th Street and 2nd Avenue, New York City, in Marcantonio’s bailiwick.
Another difficulty in narcotics enforcement, not even whispered about in Washington, is the leakage from diplomatic sources. It is politic for the Bureau to deny this is so, because nothing can be done about it. But huge amounts of concentrated dope come in envoys’ sealed pouches. There is, as everyone in Washington knows, a lively racket in the diplomatic corps in black market money. No easier method of acquiring dollars is possible than through sale of dope. Some of this contraband is used by members of the embassy staffs, themselves. In some Near Eastern and Oriental countries, a daily intake of narcotics is considered as normal as our use of coffee and tobacco. Many Latin Americans are slaves to marijuana, especially in the eating form, not otherwise available in the States. Some of this, which doesn’t find its way into the channels of trade, is presented by the diplomats to their American friends.
This will be denied, too, but ranking members of the diplomatic corps who are narcotic addicts and who can’t get the stuff from other sources have it provided for them by the protocol boys in the State Department, who withdraw it from official government sources.
We were offered reefers by peddlers in the alleys along 4th Street, SW; also at the corner of 7th and T and 7th and O, NW.
In an all-night diner at Vermont and L, frequented by musicians and hep kids, we were offered reefers also.
Hard stuff is obtainable with no trouble from street salesmen in Thomas Circle. In this neighborhood, which is bossed by Attilio Acalotti, you can place a bet on a horse, buy a numbers ticket or get a call girl. The service is performed for you by sidewalk newsboys and pimps on the steps of the National Christian Church.
In recent years, rich white racketeers have gone in for opium smoking themselves. They get it in Chinatown, where a few poppy parlors are in operation. As noted, members of the On Leong Tong deal mostly in opium and the members of Hip Sing in heroin.
Heroin is sold openly on the corner of 5th and H, in the Hip Sing section of Chinatown. To prove this, we became accessories to a violation of the law.
This is how simple the whole transaction was: We were steered to a broken-down wreck named Joe, a well-known dope addict. Despite his habit, Joe is an expert locksmith, a genius at his trade. He can’t work steadily, but so talented is he, the police and other local law enforcement bodies and private detective agencies frequently hire him to pick locks. That’s how he gets the money to support his habit. We gave Joe $6 to buy a deck of heroin and left him on the corner while we drove twenty feet up the block as Joe waited for his contact, across the street from the Gospel Mission.
We walked back and passed Joe as he handed the $6 to a young Chinese, who had appeared out of an area way. Joe said the Chinaman’s name was Benny Wong. This is one of the commonest Chinese names, there may be 500 with it in Washington. While Benny went to get the stuff, Joe sat down on a stoop and fell asleep. He had been loading himself with secanol, a synthetic, to keep his nerve steady until he got the heroin, and he was in a pitiable condition. While Joe slumbered, two metropolitan cops walked by. They thought he was drunk. One went to get the wagon while we talked the other out of pinching our decoy. A few minutes after the cops left, Benny returned with the heroin. That’s all there was to it.
The “hooked” addict’s cost of supporting his “yen” runs from $35 a week up, though if one “has a monkey on his back,” meaning the urge is desperate and irresistible, he will be soaked from $50 to $100 a week. Those who can afford the best stuff or who no longer get a bang out of cheap grades are bled for as much as $500 a week.
When Hyman I. Fischbach, brilliant counsel of the Congressional committee investigating crime and law enforcement in the District of Columbia, queried Assistant Commissioner Harney of the Narcotics Bureau, some startling facts about narcotic addiction were brought out, yet missed by the press and the public. These hitherto unpublished excerpts make interesting reading.