This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, May 29, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The death of Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore Police is bringing into clearer focus the need for reforms to police forces in the United States,

but fixing how cops do their jobs won't be enough.

At a recent Capitol Hill briefing, the Cato Institute's Tim Lynch also argued for an end to the American War on Drugs.

Freddie Gray lost his life in a horrifying set of circumstances.

The authorities tell us that Freddie was handcuffed and he was put into the back of a police

van, but the police officers did not put him in a seatbelt.

So with his hands handcuffed behind his back he would not able to brace himself as the

police van moved along around the city.

And as he pleaded for medical help, again the authorities tell us that the officers who are responsible for him ignored his pleas.

A medical examiner later reported that Freddie's spine was snapped.

He fell into a coma for a week and then he died as a result of those injuries.

The protest that we saw in Ferguson last summer and the protests in Baltimore that started after Freddie's case came to light

has started a long overdue discussion of poverty and policing, especially in our cities.

My remarks are going to focus on police tactics and police misconduct and the criminal justice system more generally.

At the Cato Institute, we started an initiative three years ago that we call the National Police

Misconduct Reporting Project and you can find that on the web at police

misconduct.net. Each day we gather together misconduct incidents from around the country and one of our

purposes is to draw more attention to the problem of police misconduct and also

to develop policies that can reduce the number of

incidents and bring accountability to those who abuse their power. Now sometimes

...