When we tally up the human costs of drug addiction, we sometimes focus too much on addicts. After all, they are clearly the most visible victims. But there’s another set of victims, ranging from spouses and children all the way up to innocent bystanders who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That’s what happened last Thursday when a small time dealer was being pursued by narcotics officers. He managed to drive away from the sting officers had set up and a chase ensued. Lonnie Dean is accused of running a stop sign and killing Roberta Torres. She had nothing to do with the arrest or the drug, methamphetamine, involved.
It doesn’t seem to give any satisfaction that Dean could be charged with murder here. Whenever a felon kills someone in the commission of a crime, the charge can be bumped up to homicide. That’s what happened in a death following a bank robbery in Albuquerque last year. In that incident, two women were killed by the fleeing felon while they sat, unaware, at a stop light.
These types of incidents have led to policies elsewhere where the police break off pursuit whenever there seems to be a danger to the public. Police in the most recent case thought the defendant was headed into a dead end, and they did back off. It turned out this didn’t do any good.
It’s a little frustrating when the argument that it’s the illegal nature of drugs that leads to the chases and the crashes – as if legalization would stop all the carnage. But taking a look over the border and you’ll see just how competition, legal or not, is dealt with in the drug dealing community. Guns and bloodshed result. The victims in Mexico aren’t just the narco-terrorists, although they are happy to shoot each other. There’s plenty of collateral damage as well.
It wasn’t that long ago that the “bravest woman in Mexico” fled across the border to escape threats on her life. And she was just a small town police chief.
So, yeah. There’s plenty of damage to go around. And all the rationalization in the world isn’t going to bring Ms. Torres back.
