Back in the 1980s, I was not a fan of the television show Miami Vice. The focus of the show — cops Sonny Crockett and Rico Tubbs enforcing laws against vice — was not appealing. Stop the crackdown on vice — including by bowing out of the war on drugs — and follow a policy of live and let live instead, I thought. Miami and the rest of America would be a freer and safer place as a result.
Nonetheless, when the show was on near me and a boat chase happened, I would stop what I was doing and watch.
You never knew what crazy thing might happen. One time Crockett and Tubbs raced their boat after another, ending with the pursued boat flying out of the water, through the air, and onto a road. Another time, Crockett drove a car to race a boat, ultimately leading to the capture of the guy fleeing in the boat.
That was some good TV. Sometimes an episode would even demonstrate one of the many reasons why a chase is better than just blowing up a boat with a suspected bad guy thought to be on board. In the car versus boat chase, for example, it turned out the guy ultimately captured was a cop too.
If President Donald Trump has his way, though, it looks like the days of such boat chases are over. Last week he took credit for ordering the United States military’s from afar destroying of a boat in international water near Venezuela and killing all 11 of its occupants. The killed individuals, Trump asserted, were “terrorists” transporting illegal drugs to America.
No chase. No attempt at arrests. Just murder and property destruction with suspicion of wrongdoing viewed as sufficient basis. That is not good TV. Neither, as explained in depth in editorials this week by legal scholars Jacob G. Hornberger and Andrew Napolitano, does this president-ordered action comport with the restraints imposed by US Constitution or with principles of justice rooted in the protection of individual rights.
The Trump doctrine for enforcing drug prohibition displayed in the military attack on a boat and the people on board last week is a doctrine calling for serial acts of killing and destruction by government without any check. Miami Vice enjoyed a five-season run on NBC. Hopefully, in contrast, enough people will express outraged at the “pilot” of Trump’s new drug war tactic that he will decide to cancel any plans to authorize its use again.
