Pubdate: Sun, 21 May 2000
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2000 The Baltimore Sun, a Times Mirror Newspaper.
Contact:  http://www.sunspot.net/
Forum: http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/ultbb/Ultimate.cgi?actionintro
Author: Gregory Kane, Sun Columnist
Bookmark: additional Editorials, OPEDs & Columns may be found at 
http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm

BEING BLACK ON A WEEKNIGHT WARRANTS A STOP-AND-FRISK

MY SON HAS a message for Mayor Martin O'Malley: Thanks a bunch. Thanks a 
million for turning the Baltimore City police loose on me.

It happened a couple of weeks back, just days before those 19 characters on 
what is jokingly referred to as the Baltimore City Council showed their 
utter contempt for civil liberties and the Constitution by confirming Ed 
Norris as police commissioner. My son, 25 come this September, had just 
walked out of a 7-Eleven store at the corner of Reisterstown Road and 
Belvedere Avenue toting a bag of doughnuts.

In saner places, a 25-year-old black man emerging from a 7-Eleven with a 
bag of doughnuts wouldn't be considered a crime. But America has never been 
sane when the subject is young black men who have, since days of old, been 
considered a public menace. So carrying a couple of doughnuts around is not 
considered a normal activity but the prelude to potentially felonious mischief.

Two cops descended on my son, stopped him, frisked him "about five times," 
he estimated, and then proceeded with the third degree. Where did he live? 
In the 3100 block of Garrison Ave. Why, then, was he walking along 
Belvedere Avenue?

Belvedere Avenue is only one block from where he lives. In other 
neighborhoods, taking a stroll through the neighborhood -- especially one 
block from your house -- is considered a reasonable and healthy activity. 
But not where young black men live. Taking a leisurely walk only indicates 
that you have other, more sinister thoughts in mind.

"When was the last time you were arrested?" the officers wanted to know. 
Notice how the officers assumed he had been arrested. They didn't ask, 
"Have you ever been arrested?" My son should have told them the only time 
he's been arrested was for carrying a gun to protect himself from the very 
muggers these officers assumed he was. ("Where were they when I was getting 
robbed in January?" my son wanted to know. It happened within a few blocks 
of where he was being questioned.)

"Do you have any outstanding court dates?" was the last query, one my son 
found excruciatingly stupid.

"Yeah, like I'd tell them even if I really did," he told me.

So welcome to new Baltimore policing, courtesy of the 
O'Malley-Norris-Sheila Dixon regime. Maybe we should have a sign for folks 
entering Baltimore that says "Welcome to Baltimore, where police will stop 
you for being black on a weeknight." My son's experience smacks of a 
jackboot affair to me, an illegal stop-and-frisk that sounds like a 
violation of the grounds the Supreme Court laid down in Terry vs. Ohio back 
in 1968. But Balti-morons are OK with it. They've said it over the airwaves 
on talk radio and on the pages of this paper: As long as crime is reduced, 
no violation of civil liberties or the Constitution is too great. If 
homicides are reduced, anything goes.

I've always suspected that Americans, who fancy themselves democratic by 
nature, are really fascistic. The Founding Fathers knew this. That's why 
they drew up the Bill of Rights. If Americans were democratic by nature -- 
fair, just, always hankering to protect the rights of others, especially 
the underdog -- we wouldn't need a Bill of Rights, which act as a kind of 
protection against the Joe Stalin in us.

But if we've definitely committed to fascism now, let's do it right. Let's 
be efficient about it. When the cops finished questioning my son, they let 
him go on his way. That was not efficient. It left him free to return to 
his apartment, where he may have committed the sinister act of eating his 
doughnuts. Why, he may have sat down to watch television. Who knows what 
heinous crimes that may have led to?

If we're serious about reducing crime, here's what we must do: Impose 
martial law and curfews on all high-crime areas of Baltimore. Round up all 
suspected drug dealers and addicts, suspend habeas corpus and jail them all 
without trial. Conduct house-to-house searches to remove all guns and drugs.

Of course, some innocent folks might get tossed into the hoosegow under 
this plan. But we can't quibble about minutiae like jailing an innocent 
person or two, or 10, or a thousand. We're talking about reducing crime 
here. And, as Balti-morons have made clear to their mayor and police 
commissioner, anything goes. We'll accept any violation of our rights, as 
long as the homicides go down.

Once we do this, we'll have to make an announcement to the rest of the 
world that we are no longer a democracy, that we no longer believe in 
freedom and rights and justice and all that nonsense. We'd have to admit 
that, like the good Germans circa 1933, we are willing to trade our 
freedoms for safety.

And as we all know, that German experiment with Nazism turned out well, 
didn't it? 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Thunder