Pubdate: Fri, 28 Apr 2000
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2000 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071
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Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Author: Judy Mann

PHONY DEFENDERS OF CIVIL LIBERTIES

Republicans foraging for political nourishment in the government's recovery 
of Elian Gonzalez are engaging in the most transparent hypocrisy we've seen 
in a long time.

The family values, law-and-order set has done a complete turnaround when it 
comes to a Cuban boy. Those slamming Attorney General Janet Reno and 
President Clinton are the same people who natter about the sanctity of the 
parent-child relationship and who have been behind the massive buildup of 
paramilitary police throughout the country.

They support the use of overwhelming force to patrol drug-infested urban 
areas and to serve search warrants on drug suspects.

What we saw occur in that house in Little Havana on Saturday happens every 
night in this country, with two critical differences. First, when 
paramilitary units serve drug warrants, they are invading the homes of 
people who have a constitutional right to be presumed innocent until proven 
guilty. The Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez were not innocent: They were 
defying the law and showed no sign of behaving like responsible citizens. 
The second important difference is that the federal agents carried off 
Elian's recovery under the glare of a world spotlight and conducted a 
by-the-book surgical strike.

Unlike recent police performances in New York City, no one got killed in 
Little Havana. And no one was going to get shot or killed by the federal 
agent who, in the famous photo, was pointing his weapon away from Elian. 
For critics of the operation to continue talking about a gun being pointed 
at the boy is the height of irresponsibility. It shows a contempt for the 
American public that will do the Republicans and their spinmeisters no good.

Nor will their spiteful criticism of Reno. "Why was force used?" asked 
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.). "Wasn't there a more peaceful 
answer?"

If he had a better solution, he should have picked up the phone.

One can't help but wonder whether the critics who say Reno should have 
continued negotiations would have had the surfeit of patience she 
demonstrated. It's a good bet that had this been, say, a Haitian child, the 
law-and-order folks would have raided the place weeks ago, and none of us 
would have even known it was happening.

Unlike the Republican opportunists who are trying to turn this into an 
election year circus, most Americans understand that it is the Miami 
relatives who defied the law who are at fault.

Whatever credibility the Miami Cuban community might have had--never much 
among those familiar with conditions in pre-Castro Cuba - got squandered by 
the dreadful behavior of Elian's relatives.

These are tough times in Cuba, primarily because the United States is 
continuing its pigheaded embargo instead of normalizing relations with 
President Fidel Castro. But children such as Elian now have access to 
health care and education - which they couldn't have had in pre-Castro days 
unless their sisters worked in tourist brothels.

For Republicans to bleat about excessive force boggles the mind. These are 
the folks who vote billions of dollars for the so-called war on drugs, 
which includes middle-of-the-night raids on private homes, with children 
inside them, and the seizure and forfeiture of drug suspects' property, 
even if the suspects are never convicted.

"What you see in the Elian case is standard operating procedure in drug 
cases," says Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center, which is 
funded by financier George Soros to develop more effective drug policies 
than the ones we now have. "Every year, this happens tens of thousands of 
times where one member of a family may be suspected of drug dealing, 
including marijuana, and you have people screaming and kids present.

The photos not being seen are the tens of thousands of children exposed to 
this when law enforcement shows up to arrest the parents or big brothers 
for suspected involvement in drugs."

Nearly 90 percent of police departments have paramilitary units, and 46 
percent of them have been trained by active-duty armed forces personnel, 
according to a study by Peter B. Kraska and Victor E. Kappeler, who teach 
criminal justice at Eastern Kentucky University. By the early 1990s, most 
branches of the military and national guard were becoming involved in 
drug-law enforcement, both domestically and internationally, they wrote in 
the February 1997 issue of the journal Social Problems. The use of these 
units grew tenfold during the '90s, and three-quarters of their assignments 
were to serve drug-related warrants, which usually involve no-knock entries 
into private homes.

The militarization of police has been fueled by several factors: federal 
grants; surplus military equipment, including armored personnel carriers, 
that have gone to local police departments; and the seizure laws, which 
allow police departments to keep whatever property they take from drug 
suspects and then sell it to finance further police operations. These 
paramilitary units become highly visible when an operation goes bad and 
innocent people are killed, but they are out there every night, in full 
tactical gear, heavily armed, busting down doors, throwing suspects on the 
floor, terrifying children and demonstrating that the most basic civil 
liberties have been the biggest casualties in the war on drugs.

Despite polls showing that a majority of Americans support Reno's action in 
the Elian case, House and Senate Republicans are making noises about 
holding hearings on the raid, focusing on the use of force.

Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, 
said the panel should investigate what he called "an increasing pattern of 
force - excessive force" by the administration in dealing with the public. 
Given what we know happens in drug raids, that might be a very good idea. 
But I don't think that's what he has in mind.
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D