Teaching Moment: Where's the Weed?
Here are a couple of tutorials for Professor Gates, to let him understand we're really moving into a post-racial America (though please don't ignore Chappelle's advice to always have a white person around to talk to the police - "post-racial" may mean something different than you think it does, or at least what the cop thinks it does). In the first, Stephen Colbert highlights some of the signs that equality has reached us all, such as a white grandma getting tasered for not signing her parking ticket, and uttering those words that challenge the policeman's duty to its core, "I dare you". See, she didn't even have to be black. The second shows what happens to a young girl, apparently half Caucasian/half Hispanic, who irrationally defies the authority of the law and sheer common sense by fleeing an officer's upraised Taser, forcing him to Taser her. (This brand of Taser has the advantage that it can pierce the girl's skull even to touching the brain, something other brands have only been successful with in laboratory tests. New improved versions can now fire off 3 Tasers in succession, so if we want to be truly color-blind, a white, a black and a Hispanic.) So if Prof. Gates really wants to max out his 15 minutes of judicial fame, "I'll meet yo mama outside" is terribly old school. "Don't Tase me, Bro" or "I dare you" - key phrases to success. Real contempt of cop is harder than it looks.
We've been so successful that in the last 4 years, black drug incarcerations have fallen 22% while white drug incarcerations have risen 43%. Who says meth is bad? It's bringing about social equality! Either our attitudes towards blacks will improve, or we'll see everyone on the street as a drug-crazed thug in the fit of panicked withdrawals - either way, it's progress, dontcha think?
A funny thing happened in the early Bush years - Milosevic resigned in Yugoslavia and was turned over the International Court in The Hague for war crimes. And the Bush Administration ignored it. Well, I can see why - non-violent containment was not a keystone to the Bush Doctrine. Another funny thing happened in the early Bush years - we forgot that crime in America had plummeted by half to 2/3 during the 1990's. Normally rational people get together and have conversations like, "Clinton sucked as a President". "Yeah, he put lots of black people in prison." "And all those new cops..." "Yeah, and he cut welfare". It's kind of like trying to make sense of the First Gulf War without remembering that Iraq had occupied Kuwait. "Why did we send in all those troops?" "And it just stirred up Muslims to boot".
See, we had a big problem in 1992 with crime, highest in any recent memory. And much of that was black-on-black crime. And to dispel a rumor, people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were right up front in talking about and trying to do something about black-on-black crime. But the fact is, blacks were victims of this crime surge much much more than whites were. If you were a black male, that murder rate hits home. If you were a black female, that rape and violent assault category is most germane. In general, it wasn't a cozy time, and for those in big cities, especially the poorer parts, it was damn tough. And something that would seem to require tough action, even if you dislike police and regard them as in practice often as renegade as the criminals they're supposed to control.
So what do you do? Or what did we do? Obviously one thing we did do was build a lot of prisons and arrest a lot of black men. Did we arrest the right ones? Did we even target the right ones? Or even, was what we were doing a cruel mirage that pretended to do something while the real cures were elsewhere? Were pot busts misguided, or were they akin to getting Al Capone on tax charges when nothing else worked? Should we do anything at all, lest we contribute to a police state?
You'd think these questions and their answers would be more important than what happened in Iraq or the firing of a few attorneys, seeing as the millions of Americans these policies affected, but chances are few people even have a sense of what worked. What brought us out of our crime spree? Neighborhood Watch? Not likely. Reactive punishment arrests? Nope. Economic growth? Not enough in those neighborhoods and in the wrong years. Levitt postulates that the four major factors were more cops on the street, increased incarceration, the fall of the crack epidemic and the availability of abortion lowering unwanted birth. Well, that last one's a doozy, not the first cause that jumps to mind. (Levitt also notes the peculiar lack of studies really testing the effects of the crack epidemic).
But it's one thing to say, "more cops", but what do we expect they will do? Just stand there? Whistle Dixie? (Sorry, a bit of Southern humor). What actually works to control crime, and what's ineffective or even counterproductive? Right-wingers might say, "it's worth giving up Constitutional rights", but does that even help in the end? Left-leaners might say, "We have to be fair", but how does that fit in with stopping a crime wave with particular demographics? So ideals and gut reactions aside, what actually works? Sherman notes that random patrols do little. Targeted patrols on hot street corners do a lot. Targeting repeat offenders does a lot. DUI arrests, even with side-effects for preventing other crimes via gun pickups and repeat offender pickups. Nuisance abatement is one location-specific measure known to work. (Even though property-specific measures work in controlling crime, the people who own or control that property aren't always willing to go along - fear of retaliation from gangbangers, social sympathy against removing destitute drunks, etc.)
Sadly there are a lot of things we don't even have tested:
What is notably absent from these findings, however, are many topics of great concern to police. Gang prevention, for example, is a matter about which we could not find a single impact evaluation of police practices. Police curfews and truancy programs lack rigorous tests. Police recreation activities with juveniles, such as Police Athletic Leagues, also remain unevaluated. Automated identification systems, in-car computer terminals, and a host of other new technologies costing billions of dollars remain unevaluated for their impact on crime prevention. There is clearly a great deal of room for further testing of hypotheses not listed here due to the absence of available scientific evidence.
But I'll let Sherman itemize his "approaches that hold promise":
o police traffic enforcement patrols against illegally carried handguns
o community policing with community participation in priority setting
o community policing focused on improving police legitimacy
o zero tolerance of disorder, if legitimacy issues can be addressed
o problem-oriented policing generally
o adding extra police to cities, regardless of assignments
o warrants for arrest of suspect absent when police respond to domestic violence
Look at #3 & #4 - community policing focused on police legitimacy, and zero tolerance if maintaining legitimacy. Pres. Obama, Prof. Gates, Sgt. Crowley - put down the beer bongs for a moment, and let's take this in. First, I hope we can agree that controlling and reducing crime should be one of our shared goals. Second, I hope we can agree that measures that don't work, no matter how feel-good, are irrelevant to the discussion. Third, we do have some items that we know to work, but they in general need community approval. Fourth, we need solidarity against disorder in a way that reinforces the legitimacy of police action.
So let's say we need to come to an agreement that we have a purpose and a real need for police, even if police behavior doesn't always fit that need. We have a need for community response to drive an increased vigilance, one that tries to balance privacy and property rights with community effects. We need to understand what a police encounter means and what we expect a legitimate encounter will lead to in various cases, including actual crimes, mistakes, controlling situations that could get out of hand, and areas where police and community should mind their own business. And of course we have to control police behavior even while affirming its enforcement and prevention function.
Now, President Obama, I need a special word with you. That dissing of medical marijuana a few months back? Let's look at the whole weed issue in terms of legitimacy and social order. You did your share of smoke and coke a while back. And we can both catalog the dangers of coke, both on Wall Street/Hollywood Boulevard, and in the 'hood. But I think we can both agree that a bit of weed has scarcely done the world any harm, and compared to loud, obnoxious drunks as an alternative, well, there's little comparison. Hey, look at you, you're President of the US of fuckin' A - how badly did dope stunt your career, muddle your President of the Harvard Law Review brain? So since you walked back your "stupidly" comment a few days ago, maybe this would be a good time to walk back your marijuana comments as well. Because nothing has so undermined police legitimacy over the last 50 years as the continuous meddling of police and law makers in the relatively benign desire of people to get high off a few puffs. Yes, some rabbits will masturbate themselves to death given a chance as well, but the vast majority won't, and it's a great injustice to treat the population as criminals just because they want to feel good from something that's really not harmful. Preventive detention for people who might hurt themselves through drugs? That's even loonier than that Gitmo/Bagram terrorism bit.
Most people don't want to be criminals. But people have predictable behavior. I went to one school where students would cut across the lawn, creating dirt paths. The school could have put up signs or handed out tickets, but instead they paved the paths where people wanted to walk. Most cops don't want to treat innocent people as criminals, and they have little choice but to enforce stupid laws as well as good ones, even though it reduces their own legitimacy and can endanger their lives. God knows stupid drug laws have hurt blacks much more than whites, but in general, societal disrespect for these stupid laws and subsequently the men and women who enforce them has damaged our society as a whole. We're a nation of liars and hypocrites and hiders just because of stupid drug laws. So how about spending some of that political capital on an area that will lower racial tensions, reduce ruined lives, and focus on decriminalizing drugs where it makes sense, and approach more sensibly where we need to control related violence and theft. Glenn Greenwald has done a good job in summarizing Portugal's efforts in decriminalizing drugs, and once upon a time conservatives like William Buckley were consistent enough to respect the privacy issues involved. But there can be no denying now that decriminalization is a real, respectable option to restoring human rights, decreasing unwanted enforcement effects and having a more open, tolerant society.
In short, we've wasted enough time, money and lives in bullshitting about what works and what doesn't from knee-jerk political angles, and it's about time we got to pragmatic people-focused approaches that are tested, sane and humane. So finish your beers, and let's get down to the real work. Community, legitimacy, legality. Fraternité, égalité, liberté. It's not even a new concept. Legalize it. Let our people go.
Oh yeah, last bit. I'm not a real friend of cops, but they have a tough, dangerous job and it's hard to imagine doing without them. So let's do what we can to make it a needed, respected profession that attracts the kind of people we want carrying guns. If we don't differentiate between effective force and out-of-control behavior, all we'll end up with is Bad Lieutenant.
