Oral History Program Maurice Brophy Interviewed by Pamela Barnes 22 April 1972 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Maurice Brophy Interviewed by Pamela Barnes 22 April 1972 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Brophy, Maurice, an oral history by Pamela Barnes, 22 April 1972, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Maurice Brophy. The interview was conducted on April 22, 1972, by Pamela Barnes, in a student personnel building at Weber State College. Brophy discusses drug abuse in Utah with an emphasis on the current programs. PB: Would you please tell me how you got in the law enforcement originally? MB: I’m originally from New York and I come from a police-oriented family. My father was a police man and both of my brothers are policemen. I joined the Salt Lake City Police Department and I’ve been there for four years. I was with the uniform patrol division and worked as an undercover agent in narcotics. After I was done with that, I went to the vice division and the special investigations bureau. From there I did vice work and I’m presently assigned to narcotics. PB: What are some of the drug problems in Utah, specifically Salt Lake? MB: There are many dealers and users in Salt Lake City. Our function is work with the dealers so that we cut off the supply to people and decrease the users in the city. PB: In my research, I’ve found that they’ve been lessening the penalties for marijuana and placing more emphasis on hard core drugs. What do you think of this? MB: The hard core drugs are becoming a prominent issue, not only in Salt Lake City, but throughout the state. According to a survey conducted, there is excess of twenty-one million people who have tried marijuana. It has become a fad and they’re trying to downgrade the fad status in hopes that it will fade away. A hard core addict is addicted for life. PB: Are the current projects like Odyssey House any use? 1 MB: They’re considerable use in the city and there are many others. They’re patterned after the Manhattan Project in New York. The Odyssey House has gotten a lot of its programs from there. IT does help the hard core addict know that someone does care about him and is willing to help with his problem. PB: What do you think of the Methadone program currently used in the state of Utah? MB: It’s just an additive program. It’s substituting one addictive drug for another. The only thing you can look at on the Methadone program is the call spaces. As a heroin user has to keep his supply by steeling and he only receives a certain portion of what he steals from the fence person he gives the stolen merchandise to. This pattern of crime is committed daily in order to support a heroin addiction, whereas methadone is a cheap substitute. It is as addictive as heroin but doesn’t produce the euphoric side effects. PB: Would you explain how the Methadone Program works? MB: The Methadone Program is being conducted by the Salt Lake City Department of Health in conjunction with Project Reality and Odyssey House. An addict voluntarily goes into the program. They take a urine specimen every day and run a lab report to make sure there’s no trace of heroin. If the individual does come up with what they term “dirty,” or has heroin in the blood stream, he is terminated from the program. The volunteer has to want help and want to help himself. They tone down the amount of tolerances…for example, a $180-per day habit which he would eighteen balloons a day. They put him on methadone and tone him down over the course of a month or three months to $50 a day worth of heroin. Maybe it will save someone from getting burglarized or robbed to support the man’s habit. And he can go back in society and work while he’s taking the methadone. 2 PB: What have you found to be most prevalent among the hard core addicts? MB: Heroin is the most hard core drug in the country. The large quantities of it that arrive come from Europe and Mexico. There was a recent seizure of 1,000 pounds of heroin on a barge in France which they said would have supplied every addict in the United States for a month. You can see the magnitude of the problem. PB: How does Salt Lake’s problem compare? MB: I don’t believe in statistics on how many addicts we have. We approximately have three to four hundred hard core addicts in the city. Salt Lake has a problem along with many other communities. Salt Lake realizes they have the problem whereas other communities won’t acknowledge it. PB: Are you aware of any programs going on throughout the rest of the state? MB: Law enforcement constantly has programs going on. I think Salt Lake is a leader for Project Reality and Odyssey House since it does contain a larger percentage of hard core addicts. We hope other communities will come to us for help. PB: How much drugs are on college campuses? MB: I believe that heroin is quite prevalent on college campuses. Not to be specific, but there has to be a bad apple in every bunch. PB: What part do prescription drugs have in drug abuse? MB: They constitute a major part due to the fact that the majority of drug abusers could easily be your wife, your mother-in-law, your neighbor. An example is diet pills. Very few women take them for a weight control problem. The pills are a stimulant that let you do a lot more work and that’s what they take them for. A lot of these products that have been marketed but not tested by the government are slowly taking over the market. In 3 Utah, physicians got together and decided they would work out their own program for reducing the prescription drugs that are available but not needed. This was a great step. Some may go to other drugs, but for some this is a dead end. PB: Is this a big a problem as the marijuana and hard core drug problems? MB: Yes. Marijuana has become, I believe, socially accepted by the American public. Several years ago, possession of any drug was a felony which could mean incarceration in a state prison. Now possession of any drug is a misdemeanor. PB: How does that affect your job? MB: In the narcotics division, we really do not have the time to chase the users. I do not make the laws, I just enforce them. PB: What effected does the new Controlled Substance Act of 1971 have on the penalty for drug users in Utah? MB: It drastically revised the penalty situation in Utah since it laid down in black and white exactly what penalties would be given for specific violations of the drug laws. For example, there are four major schedules involved in the Act and schedule one deals with the sale, use, and possession of heroin. For the sale of heroin an individual can receive fifteen years upon conviction. Prior to this, the indefinite status of a prison term for an individual who had been convicted of sale of heroin could range between eighteen months and five years. This is a good deterrent. PB: Do you think it will have an effect on the drug problem? MB: I believe that if you were the person being incarcerated for fifteen years then you would be careful not to get wrapped up too many times. They can run consecutive sentences. PB: Does this Act eliminate past behavior? 4 MB: There’s probation built into the law for a first violator. The second charge is automatically a time charge, meaning they’ll serve time. You know what you’re going to get if you get convicted and it’s a good deterrent. PB: The Act embodies other provisions, such as the Counterfeit Substances part. Could you elaborate on that part? MB: On prior sales to police officers or undercover agents, if an individual had sold a substance that was not a controlled drug and was not ad drug at all, there were no charges that could be brought against them in relation to drug charges. The Act of 1971 pays particular attention to counterfeit substances. If an individual purports to sell any controlled substance and he does, in fact, give in lieu of that substance a counterfeit one, the individual is guilty of a felony, which is punishable by half of the penalty of actually selling the drug. This eliminates burning police officers for money. PB: In the Salt Lake area, how do feel the drug problem relates and contributes to the crime rate? MB: It definitely has a large effect on the crime rate, not only in Salt Lake, but in every community. Prescription drug abusers will burglarize drugstores. Heroin addicts steal to support the habit. This increases burglaries, robberies, and bad checks. PB: In your experience, why do people go on drugs? Do you think it can be attributed to a specific item, or is it just a personal choice? MB: I think it falls in the realm of personal choice. Some of it is following a fad. Some of it is an escape mechanism—it will take them out of the real world where there’s something bad they can’t cope with and put them in a fantasy world, but they don’t have any control over what they will hallucinate. But it has to be a choice. No one can force you. 5 PB: You said earlier that you deal mostly with the dealers. What is the age? MB: It ranges from all ages. There is no direct classification. A dealer wants your money— that’s all he wants. When he’s built up his clientele to such a point that he can sit back and enjoy the profits then he’s running a good business. The individuals that are in the younger bracket are usually involved in high school trade. But dealers can range from ten to eighty years old. PB: The dealers you have seen…are they of one race? How does this compare with other cities? MB: Being of one race is a misnomer. They’re all involved. I’ve had colored people, Caucasian people, very few oriental people, you have Mexicans involved. Heroin traffic has been more or less channeled in Salt Lake to the black element in the city, but there are many others. Everyone deals in drugs. Some will specialize in certain areas. Blacks have been known to specialize in heroin, but this is by no means a yardstick to say they are controlling it or anything else. PB: Recently on the Weber campus an undercover agent was placed in the dormitories. There was a controversy over the ethics of this. How do you feel about it? MB: I think it’s a fantastic idea. It has definitely served its purpose because several dealers have been apprehended. This is really the only way you can go about. If he walked up there and said he was narcotics law enforcement, suddenly there wouldn’t be a problem. If people know the police are around, they won’t be as lackadaisical as they have been. PB: When you worked as an undercover agent in Salt Lake City, were you ever in a situation where you had to arrest any friends? 6 MB: No, but that’s due to the simple fact that usually a policeman’s only friends are other policemen. There have been agents who have taken the wrong road, but as a police officer you don’t usually run around with a group of dopers. PB: How about when you’re working undercover—who do people react when they discover you are an agent? MB: Most of them have regrets that they’ve been apprehended. Others may rightly feel that it was unjust because we gained their confidence, which they believe is sacred. But most, I think, realize that this is the way the game is played. Some will hold a grudge, but usually it’s a lot of lip service. You have to get tight with these people when you’re undercover. PB: Are there drug problems in the small towns? MB: Yes and what we do is train law enforcement officers in these towns on how to effectively prosecute and build a case against drug abuse. This training is passed on through a person who comes up and rides with us and follows our cases from the beginning to the end. They don’t have the problem that a large community like Salt Lake may have, but they still have a problem and deserve the help that a large department can give them. PB: Do you believe the drug problem in the Salt Lake area is coming under control? MB: Yes, I believe it is. Control is a funny word…you just have to be on top of the drug usage. Vernacular-wise, it takes quite a bit of time to understand what you’re asking for and what you’re getting. The great thing about drug enforcement is that you have the public behind you. Everyone is usually down on drugs because they’ve seen the bad 7 effects. Anything that the public supports, they’re willing to finance and money is a big factor in fighting drugs. 8