Managing Conflicts in Law Enforcement Settings

Managing Conflict in Multi-Jurisdictional Drug Units

What type of conflict is described in the case study?

The case study made it clear that there were multiple conflicts involved in the multi-jurisdictional drug units (hereinafter alternatively “task force”) that were created to combat the purported proliferation of what the authors term “crystal methedrine” (but actually mean “crystal methamphetamine”) throughout the county of interest. Although the case study is silent concerning any evidence of the actual prevalence of meth labs in the county, the creation of the task force suggests the evidence justified this aggressive intervention. Nevertheless, the task force initiative suffered from a leadership conflict from the outset, including most especially a lack of definitional clarity about the task force’s role and responsibilities in the foundational memorandum of understanding between the participating municipalities. Indeed, virtually all of the other inter-jurisdictional and even intra-jurisdictional conflicts between city police and fire departments that emerged during the 18-month existence of the task force can be attributed to this original conflict in varying degrees.

Some indication of the organizational “turf battles” that would come to define the task force was the fact that just 10 out of the original 15 cities recruited for the task force ultimately agreed to participate due to conflicts over the manner in which it should be organized. Likewise, each of the ten jurisdictions that agreed to participate in the task force suffered from a litany of internal rivalries concerning who was in charge for how long and for what purposes. These issues in particular were cited time and again in the case study as being among the most important antecedents to the ultimate failure of the task force.

Likewise, there were also conflicts between the original jurisdictions concerning how the task force should be budgeted and, like debates over the inequities caused by the inequitable population representation in the U.S. Senate, what role that population and available federal financial resources should play in determining which jurisdictions should have greater authority in administering the task force. Taken together, the foregoing and related issues created a situation in which the task force became increasingly ineffective over the course of its 18-month existence to the point where they actually killed a local well-liked citizen by accident during a raid at the wrong address, an incident which spelled the end of this initiative.

Multi-jurisdictional drug units are common across the country. What issues should be discussed and by whom before such a unit is created? How much of the impetus for the creation of these units can be attributed to increased federal funding and the irrational fear of drugs?

The case study described numerous issues that should have been hammered out prior to the task force ever making its first interdiction raid on a suspected meth lab in this county. In particular, the precise respective roles and responsibilities of the police representatives from each of the participating municipalities and a clear chain of command should have been established from the outset and provisions should have been made for these representatives to receive the training they needed for these specialized law enforcement activities. In addition, it appears that the members of task force were never provided with the opportunity to even practice their interdiction strategies together before being deployed in the field.

As noted above, some of these constraints were attributable, at least in part, to the need of the three largest cities to spend their federal funding for combating drugs in the country or lose it. For instance, the case study points out that, “The three largest cities in the county … were promised more federal pass-through monies that were being distributed to the state as part of a larger joint collaboration between the federal government and the state government directed toward drug enforcement.” This is a powerful impetus for cash-strapped cities that are already operating on razor-thin budgets to do something – anything – to prosecute the war on drugs to continue the flow of federal funds (Kasner, 2017) and it is not surprising that the task force largely failed to meet expectations.

Indeed, the federal “war on drugs” that has been waged by the United States for the past half century has been an abysmal failure by any measure, but this has not stopped proponents from trying (Doyle, 2018). Although the 1986 and 1988 Anti?Drug Abuse Act authorized the disbursement of federal funds to state and local municipalities in an effort to fight illegal drug use and associated violent crimes, and the trillion or so dollars spent on these initiatives have failed to achieve any discernible reduction in drug usage or trafficking in the United States. In fact, illicit drug use by Americans has increased significantly over the past half century and the ongoing opioid crisis is a clear indication that the war on drugs has not succeeded in achieving its objectives (Miller, 2020).