As a detective in the narcotics division, Burns sought to meticulously build a case against top drug lords. But his superiors were uninterested in that prospect, which was consuming manpower and would take years to produce an arrest. They were interested in enhancing the metrics, and since arresting five teenagers a day selling drugs on street corners yielded better statistics than arresting a drug king-pin after a multiyear investigation, they favored the course that quickly produced the higher numbers. From their point of view—and from the point of view of the politicians to whom they
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