Pubdate: Wed, 15 Nov 2000
Source: Poughkeepsie Journal (NY)
Copyright: 2001 Poughkeepsie Journal
Contact:  PO Box 1231 Poughkeepsie, NY 12602
Fax: (845) 437-4921
Feedback: http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/news/forms/letter_form.htm
Website: http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/
Author: Mary Beth Pfeiffer, Poughkeepsie Journal
Note: Part 1b of a 3 part series

The Prison Explosion, Part 1b

BLACKS FEEL TARGETED FOR DRUG ARRESTS

It's happened to a pastor, a county legislator, a school superintendent, a 
social worker and a program director. All of them black, all of them male, 
they've been either followed in stores, stopped while driving, confronted 
while walking the street or all of the above.

"What are you doing on this side of town this late at night?" is a common 
question Theodore Arrington, a Poughkeepsie school social worker says he 
and other African Americans are asked by police.

Police emptied a trunk full of books from Dutchess County Legislator Mario 
Johnson's car after a traffic stop. They've stopped Poughkeepsie 
Superintendent of Schools Robert Watson several times, he believes, because 
he drives a luxury car. And the Rev. Dwight Bolton of Smith Metropolitan 
AME Zion Church was accused of shoplifting while on vacation.

These confrontations, they and others maintained, are part of a pattern of 
"racial profiling" -- choosing potential crime suspects by the color of 
their skin. The large number of minorities arrested, particularly for drug 
crimes, is proof of that pattern, they say.

"The real proble ... is prejudice and racism," said Bolton. "There are 
things people grow up believing. It's saturated in their subconscious."

Location of crime at play

Law enforcement officials see it differently.

"Unfortunately, the possession and dealing takes place for the most part in 
the minority community," said Dutchess County District Attorney William 
Grady. "There's no one who wants stricter law enforcement than members of 
the minority community."

But it's not as if whites don't partake in the illegal drug trade: "There 
is much more drug abuse in the white community than in the black 
community," saidDutchess County Probation Director Patricia Resch. "But 
it's behind closed doors."

The latest government survey found illicit drugs were used by 6.6 percent 
of whites and 7.7 percent of African Americans.

In Dutchess County, 67 percent of all felony drug arrests in 1999 were of 
blacks, though African Americans were only 8 percent of the general 
population in the 1990 census.

Moreover, blacks are 85 percent of all people serving prison sentences for 
drug crimes from Dutchess County -- the highest rate in the state, the 
Poughkeepsie Journal found in an analysis of the state's prison population 
as of February of this year. The figure for Ulster County was 57 percent, 
the analysis found.

Racial profiling alleged

Dutchess ranked eighth statewide in the combined percentage of blacks and 
Hispanics incarcerated for drug crimes, with 92 percent of drug sentences 
being served by minorities, the Journal study found. The only counties that 
ranked higher were four of the five boroughs of New York City and 
Westchester, Rockland and Erie counties. All have higher percentages of 
blacks than Dutchess; all but Erie have higher percentages of Hispanics.

"The justice system is not blind. There is racism in the justice system," 
said Johnson, who represents the City of Poughkeepsie in the Legislature. 
"It's institutional."

As a result of a resolution introduced by Johnson, a study is to be 
undertaken soon of potential racial profiling in Dutchess County, including 
surveys on the practices and attitudes of police.

Going where drug sales are

Many black residents interviewed for this article agreed that it exists. 
But police, judges and prosecutors -- all of them white -- disagreed, 
maintaining their aim was to uphold laws and control drug trafficking and 
related violence, not incarcerate blacks.

"Main Street is the corridor for dealing drugs," said Chief Ronald Knapp of 
the City of Poughkeepsie police, when asked about the high numbers of 
minorities arrested for drug crimes. "That is where the complaints are. 
This is where the enforcement would occur." He noted that there were 50 
shootings in the city in 1994 and only 10 last year, which he credited to 
police cracking down on drugs.

Dutchess County has two intensive anti-drug operations that make the bulk 
of the drug arrests: the city's Neighborhood Recovery Unit and the Dutchess 
County Drug Task Force, which has made 452 arrests since 1995, 62 percent 
of them of blacks.

Grady acknowledges Dutchess "could very well be the leader" in its 
percentage of blacks in prison for drug crimes. But he said the county also 
tries to keep blacks out of prison by utilizing new drug treatment 
alternatives: In 1999, 48 percent of blacks convicted of drug crimes in 
Dutchess went to prison as opposed to 53 percent statewide.

Dutchess, he said, "is at the forefront of innovative drug rehabilitation 
programs which deal exclusively with the drug-dependent offender (who is) 
almost exclusively of the minority race."

Blacks get longer sentences

While few maintain discrimination is overt, at least one report on Dutchess 
County misdemeanor convictions suggests blacks and whites are sometimes 
treated differently once they are in the criminal justice system. The study 
of 348 misdemeanor convictions by the National Institute of Corrections 
found that blacks got stiffer sentences than whites, even when their 
criminal backgrounds were similar.

Among those with no prior convictions, 27 percent of blacks and 10 percent 
of whites got jail or prison time. Among those with at least two prior 
felony or misdemeanor convictions, 92 percent of blacks and 77 percent of 
whites got a jail or prison sentence. Economic disparities may contribute 
to the imbalance, experts said; for example, in the ability of poor blacks 
to make bail.

"Those who have money get out and tend to stay out," said David Steinberg, 
Dutchess County chief assistant public defender. "Those that don't have 
money stay in." Once out of jail, many get drug treatment that can lead to 
lighter sentences.

And once in, the cycle begins: "It's criminalizing a whole generation of 
black men,'' said Zelbert Moore, a State University at New Paltz professor. 
He noted 1.5 million black men cannot vote because of felony convictions, 
which also stop them from getting jobs.

To some, the problem is lopsided enforcement. "When I lived at the corner 
of Winnikee and North White, the buyers were 99 percent white," Johnson 
said. "No one is stopping the buyers."

Sha-Kim Fitzgerald, a former Poughkeepsie drug dealer, now reformed, 
agreed: "My money, most of it, came from Caucasians."

Buyer arrests trickier

City of Poughkeepsie police have attempted so-called "reversals" -- in 
which the target is the buyer, not the seller. "Under the law, they're 
difficult because of entrapment issues," said Knapp, the city police chief, 
referring to the risk that a case will be thrown out if police are deemed 
to have enticed someone to commit a crime they would not otherwise have 
committed.

"When it comes to arresting white folks, it's entrapment,'' retorted Pete 
Johnson, a black business owner in the City of Poughkeepsie and a member of 
the Poughkeepsie Journal's minority advisory committee. "When it comes to 
arresting black folks, it's crime."

Law enforcement officials said they have conducted drug sweeps in suburban 
areas. But they were more time-consuming and expensive cases to solve, they 
said, because they generally involve higher-level actors in the drug trade.

''There are more minnows in the sea than there are big fish,'' said Jere 
Tierney, coordinator of the Dutchess County Drug Task Force. ''You don't 
see the Columbian drug lord on Main Street. You see the poor person. You 
see the young black male trying to make money.''

While drugs may be traded in suburban office settings, he said, ''It's not 
a marketplace that's readily accessible to the police officers.''