In 1993 I gave an inter­view to Antero Alli for his Seat­tle under­ground news jour­nal, Talk­ing Raven, Jour­nal of Imag­i­na­tive Trou­ble.  Antero, founder and direc­tor of ParaThe­atri­cal Research, is a poly­math, and has an uncanny knack for see­ing the things other peo­ple can’t (see Angel Tech: A Mod­ern Shaman’s Guide to Real­ity Selec­tion).  I highly rec­om­mend that you explore his writ­ing.

I made one good friend from this inter­view; and one solid enemy.  The ideas expressed herein I think are pretty good, but I’ve never met any­one will­ing to take them to the next step.  Insti­tu­tions tend to be institutional.

Inter­est­ing read, any­way, so I’ve included it.

This is the inter­view, as it was printed, word for word.

Inter­view­ing the Law BRUCE HANIFY Deputy Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney Yakima County, WA: Nar­cotics Divi­sion

Over the last sev­eral issues, TALKING RAVEN has fea­tured inter­views with knowl­edge­able experts and pro­fes­sion­als from respectable insti­tu­tions and gov­ern­ment agen­cies. I knew this “intox­i­ca­tion” issue would be incom­plete with­out talk­ing to a narc. Bruce Han­ify is not your aver­age nar­cotics offi­cer; his peers respect his work and prob­a­bly con­sider him a mav­er­ick in his field, which is pros­e­cu­tion. Mr. Han­ify is one of those guys you head off with in a court of law after you’ve been arrested for a ncarcotics-related crime in Yakima County, WA. To many out­siders, Yakima is a postcard-perfect pic­ture of whole­some North­west Amer­i­cana. (One of my favorite actors, Kyle MacLach­lan, hails from Yakima.) To Bruce Han­ify, his co-workers and supe­rior offi­cers Yakima is a major drug war con­duit with an inces­tu­ous under­belly of state wel­fare pro­grams. Han­ify was vaca­tion­ing on the Olympic Penin­sula when he agreed to meet me and chat about “intox­i­ca­tion.” Well over six foot and maybe 200 pounds, Han­ify, 38, has a fighter’s gait and some­times speaks tru da side uv hiz mout when mak­ing a point. His short com­bus­tive laugh, like a mis­fired shot­gun blast, occa­sion­ally pep­pers our con­ver­sa­tion. Hanify’s eyes are kind, I thought, from see­ing too much that wasn’t. Dur­ing an oth­er­wise pleas­ant meet­ing, I couldn’t help feel­ing under the influ­ence of a series of small, com­pletely irra­tional teenage para­noid flash­backs: “I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M TALKIN’ WITH A NARC, MAN!” — ANTERO ALLI

TALKING RAVEN: What do you do and long have you done it?

BRUCE HANIFY: Half of my work at this point is drug prac­tice which involves search and seizure and privacy-type issues and I’ve been work­ing for the Nar­cotics Divi­sion since 1990. The law enforce­ment empha­sis in Yakima, which I think is the same for most Wash­ing­ton coun­ties, is in the­ory to go out and get the deal­ers .… an art form in itself. But, in prac­tice, a lot of the peo­ple that get nailed are peo­ple who are guilty of sim­ple pos­ses­sion. In other words, the Class “C” felony, which means, in actual sen­tenc­ing, 20 to 30 days in jail for mostly cocaine and some heroin cases. Then, you’ve got the mis­de­meanor mar­i­juana offenses, which I per­son­ally do not deal with, but our office does. At least half of the drug cases filed in Yakima every year are cocaine cases; Yakima is known as a major con­duit for cocaine supply.

TR: Where does the Yakima cocaine come from and how does it get there?

BH: Sta­tis­ti­cally, the belief is that it comes mostly from Mex­ico through Cal­i­for­nia. It prob­a­bly comes via mostly ille­gal immi­grants run­ning it up to make a quick buck. It’s a lot like the pro­hi­bi­tion era in that respect; poor peo­ple look­ing for money.

TR: From your per­sonal expe­ri­ence, what are some of your ideas and the­o­ries about why the so-called “drug prob­lem” might never be solved?

BH: Let me explain that by shar­ing a per­spec­tive I have about mod­ern soci­ety. If you look at a soci­ety that is demo­c­ra­tic, like ours sup­pos­edly is, you look at where psy­chic energy is invested. This coun­try invests enor­mous sums of psy­chic energy in wel­fare or state-dependence, and also on drug and sub­stance depen­dence. You don’t real­ize this until you pros­e­cute and you see peo­ple com­ing in and get­ting the most atten­tion they’ve ever had in their lives while they’re being pros­e­cuted for a crime. The judge will ask them about their past and their his­tory. For the first time in their lives they’re asked about their per­sonal his­tory and it’s in the con­text of being pros­e­cuted. Most peo­ple don’t under­stand the enor­mity of this be we’ve devel­oped whole pop­u­la­tions, in terms of tens of mil­lions of peo­ple, who are depen­dent upon the state to define them and part of the fuel for that depen­dency is drug and alco­hol use.

TR: Speak more on this con­nec­tion between depen­dence on the state and drug addiction .…

BH: It doesn’t mean I’m right, but I’ve never met an alco­holic or drug addict who’s ever said, “Howdy, I’m sure glad I’m depen­dent on drugs.” When peo­ple describe their con­di­tion of depen­dence, they describe despair. When you look at the prin­ci­ple of despair and ask your­self, “Is the cure for despair pun­ish­ment and incar­cer­a­tion?” The naswer has to be no. But if you look at the actual things our soci­ety does, the answer has tra­di­tion­ally been more depen­dence, more wel­fare, more struc­tures in the school, and more incar­cer­a­tion itself. Prison especi­cally is a form of depen­dence. I’ve seen peo­ple who, for the first time in their lives, have fam­ily because they’re being pros­e­cuted; the judge is their fam­ily. The defense and the pros­e­cu­tor are their family.

TR: Let’s return to the so-called “drug problem.”

BH: We recently had prosecutor’s train­ing where cer­tain Supreme Court jus­tices, who shall remain unnamed, were invited to speak with sev­eral hun­dred pros­e­cu­tors. One of the nine Supreme Court jus­tices asked a table of us who work crim­i­nal appeals, “What do you think we should do about the drug wars? We’re spend­ing so much money on this; the court sys­tems are tied up by drug cases.” Now, this is a Supreme Court jus­tice [Note: It was Richard Guy of Spokane, with whom I had worked for a short time out of law school.], a real level-headed guy with­out a stand on the issue one way or another, want­ing us to tell him what to do. From my expe­ri­ence with police offi­cers going out on crime calls, I think about it from the angle of “What makes a human being give up his or her claim to inde­pen­dence and self-government in order to become overly depen­dent and invoke the machin­ery of the state to shape his or her life?” That’s a very inter­est­ing and very dan­ger­ous con­cept. What con­cerns me the most and what your read­ers can be cer­tain of is that peo­ple in gov­ern­ment at policy-making insti­tutes, under­stand that we have whole pop­u­la­tions depen­dent upon the invo­ca­tion of the state to shape and deter­mine the course of their daily lives.

TR: You men­tioned the prin­ci­ple of despair a lit­tle while ago. Wha are some of your thoughts about pos­si­ble cures and alle­vi­a­tions for despair?

BH: I have a real life story about that because of what I do to stay in shape. When peo­ple hear I do this, they won­der about me, so don’t get me wrong, but I work out in a box­ing club. Most of the peo­ple who work out there are typ­i­cally young men twelve t0 eigh­teen years old. Every­one of those young men thrives on some­one say­ing, “I believe in you. You’re a worth­while per­son and you have some­thing to work towards.” Young men need to be told that by an adult per­son who will help him get there through dis­ci­pline. We don’t really pro­vide that in our soci­ety. At the same time, we’re pre­tend­ing that a greater law enforce­ment mech­a­nism or greater wel­fare spend­ing will give these kids what they don’t have. So I think the prob­lem is spir­i­tual and moral in nature.

TR: Describe the most appalling encounter you’ve had dur­ing actual crime calls.

BH: Gen­er­ally speak­ing, when you see house­holds of ten or fif­teen kids under the age of eight who swear like sailors and hate author­ity fig­ures, with­out any psy­cho­log­i­cal frame­work to guide them. It’s deves­tat­ing. The adults they’re grow­ing up with are mostly drug-dependent. When these kids encounter demonic rage — the kind you see at mur­der scenes — within him­self or her­self, there’s absolutely no struc­ture in place to deal with it.

TR: What do you mean by “demonic rage” at mur­der scenes?

BH: Since I’ve been pros­e­cut­ing I’ve learned that less than 10% of the peo­ple we process through the sys­tem are truly crim­i­nal. A good 85% to 90% we process are welfare-dependent, drug-dependent peo­ple who don’t know how to direct their own lives. That small per­cent­age of peo­ple who are truly cruel, truly rapa­cious and truly mur­der­ous — when you see that, there’s a ter­ri­ble feel­ing aso­ci­ated with that which you learn to intuit. That intu­ition is a great asset to have when you’re on the streets. My the­ory about the energy of demonic rage is that some peo­ple, at var­i­ous points in their lives, become sus­cep­ti­ble to pos­ses­sion by the force. I don’t mean to sound reli­gious or any­thing, but if it pos­sesses them, I think it’s pretty much a per­ma­nent pos­ses­sion. I also think if you’re a 14 or 15 year old kid with­out much psy­cho­log­i­cal frame­work or dis­ci­pline who opens their psy­che to drugs, you can become sus­cep­ti­ble to that kind of possession.

TR: Let’s change the sub­ject. Here’s a more exotic ques­tion. Sev­eral kinds of opium poppy grow wild in the state of Wash­ing­ton, in people’s back­yards, and on hill­sides. Had any poppy cases yet?

BH: No; none. I don’t per­son­ally know where the plant is cat­e­go­rized, but I can tell you that in title 69.50 of the Revised Code of Wash­ing­ton, every sin­gle mind-altering sub­stance in the world is clas­si­fied as a Sched­ule I, II, III or IV drug; it’s prob­a­bly in there some­where. In terms of law enforce­ment, there hasn’t been a lot of atten­tion paid to it yet but when there is, leg­is­la­tion is sure to fol­low. That’s usu­ally the way it works.

TR: I want to talk more about despair. In my own life, I’ve man­aged to kick the habit of cynacism, but am still work­ing on despair which I’m look­ing at now as an addic­tion and as some­thing that feeds on itself. Once you enter a con­di­tion of despair, it might be a symp­tom or a prod­uct of overde­pen­dence elswhere, rob­bing your auton­omy and dimin­ish­ing your place in life. I’m think­ing that despair might be a nat­ural out­come of self-diminishment … Have you met or known any adults over­whelmed by despair who have kicked the habit?

BH: It’s inter­est­ing how you phrased that the way you did. You said the addic­tion to despair may be the prod­uct and out­come of some other addic­tion. As a pros­e­cu­tor I’ve noticed that our soci­ety, and maybe most West­ern soci­eties, preaches a doc­trine of Must Feel Good .… a dogma of self-esteem. You don’t dare feel any sort of depres­sion. As any cre­ative per­son knows, depres­sion is part of the process of cre­at­ing. I am sus­pi­cious that despair may be a symp­tom of our insti­tu­tional deter­mi­na­tion and insis­tence that peo­ple feel good all the time. I sus­pect the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies and doc­tors’ inter­est in Prozac is to make sure no one ever feels bad. In my own war­rior phi­los­o­phy I believe one of the engines of progress in a human being is feel­ing bad about some­thing. I write poetry, for exam­ple, as an out­let for what­ever that feel­ing is. When soci­ety and the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal peo­ple try and con­di­tion that out of you, the ques­tion then is where does the cre­ativ­ity go? What would be the nat­ural psy­chic response to that loss of cre­ativ­ity? It may be despair.

TR: Got any exam­ples of good luck sto­ries of peo­ple kick­ing the habit of despair?

BH: There are suc­cess sto­ries. I used to hear a lot of drug addicts and alco­holics say they hit the road to recov­ery in a “Blue Light Spe­cial.” That means until see­ing the flash­ing blue lights in their rearview mir­ror, they don’t even under­stand they have a prob­lem. As a pros­e­cu­tor, you see the need for state inter­ven­tion in many people’s lives to alert them to the fact that there is a prob­lem. Once they begin to work the force of that prob­lem, as you your­self have begun to work the force of trou­ble in TALKING RAVEN, I think you’re on the road to free­dom. I don’t think the free­dom comes in six months or two years. I think it comes in ten or fif­teen or twenty.

TR: The virtue of per­sis­tence.

BH: By virtue of under­stand­ing that soul engaged in life some­times feels bad and some­times looks but but that’s part of what being human is. Try­ing to drug it away or psy­chother­a­pize it away or State it away with some sort of huge wel­fare sys­tem is … bull­shit. (Blasts of com­bus­tive laugh­ter) Editor’s Note: Mr. Han­ify has been writ­ing quite a bit lately. We were pleased to pub­lish his provac­tive piece on wrestling demons, “COMMUNION”, some­where in this issue.

READ THE PROSECUTOR SERIES AT BRUCEHANIFY.COM

Define “Drug”: A Drug Warrior’s Thoughts on the 45-Year-Old War on Drugs

Bruce Han­ify 2011 All Rights Reserved

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