Chump Street & the War on Drugs
Lin Manuel Miranda’s 21 Chump Street follows the arrest of Justin Laboy by an undercover officer in 2011. The musical includes the following: a senior by the name of Justin Laboy falls in love with an undercover cop who had been posing as a student in his class. “Naomi Rodriguez,” the officer’s character name, was tasked with uncovering dealers within the high school and thus tried to buy illicit substances from students.
Rodriguez asks Laboy, an honors student who had neither dealt nor smoked, for marijuana. Laboy calls on a favor of a favor, and being that he was head-over-heels for Rodriguez, Laboy finds some for her. In the musical, Rodriguez insists that she pay him for his gift, quoted saying, “Please take the money. You make me feel bad,” incriminating Laboy for the sale of illicit substances on school grounds. He would be prosecuted as an adult, having just turned eighteen, and Laboy was decided as a felon.
A journalistic musical, Miranda’s characters relive the efforts of Palm Beach County’s “Operation D-Minus”–the outcome of which led to the arrests of over 30 high school students in Palm Beach County. “Naomi Rodriguez” said she had no regrets, and Laboy, now a convicted felon, lost his dream of joining the Air Force.
An initiative primarily credited to the Nixon administration, the United States’ War on Drugs criminalized the sale and use of several illicit substances. With the illusory goal of protecting the American public, oftentimes, the prosecution of those in possession of substances is unrelated to the extent of the threat. Compounded with the impact of systemic prejudices and corruption within American law enforcement, the issue of entrapment felt by Laboy is the natural progression of an injustice too long deferred.
Operation D-Minus was not an isolated incident, but a product of the failures of the American criminal justice system. ReLAPD Deputy Chief Stephen Downing reported, “Any increase in narcotics arrests is good for police departments. It’s all about numbers…The more arrests you have, the more funding you can get through federal grants and overtime.”
Therein is the primary flaw of American law enforcement whose goal is often to inflate arrests. When we neglect to address the large portion of these lucrative arrests, we neglect to reform such practices, doomed to repeat them.
However frustrating the arrest is in hindsight, Laboy carries with him the title of “felon,” a permanent designation as the outcast of society, unprotected from discrimination and denied participation in American society. This is a flaw in our expansive and lucrative prison system which is uniquely unforgiving of convicts. 21 Chump Street is a reminder of failures in true justice, which is too often obscured by monetary aspiration and denial of corruption within our legal systems.
