End the War on Freedom

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED OCT. 7, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
A reluctance to embrace real solutions

A reader writes: In your Sept. 19 column in describing racial profiling, I understand and I am sure any moron understands the reasoning for a person boarding an airliner and who looks to be a person of Mideast decent being profiled or eyed a little more closely.

But in your analogy of profiling you said "young black men being stopped by police when they are somewhere where they seem out place." I would like to know if you really think that is what "profiling" is, or is that something you have convinced yourself of?

A young black person stopped on the street at 2 a.m. in the morning is profiling and simply good police work maybe, depending which street and where. I have been across this country by car many times and so have some of my friends yet we have been stopped numerous times and the story is all the same, "you were crossing over the line a bit" or some other silly reason. And then they always want to search your car, and I have never given permission for that.

So by your definition I and many other black Americans are out of place by being on an interstate highway and also when they are in numerous suburbs on the main streets going to malls. Or the gentleman Who was stopped by Metro and Henderson Police and detained for hours recently along with his family while driving a U-Haul van, was he out of place or is he different than any other Americans who move in a U-Haul? I wonder, since a large number of young whites purchase and use drugs, are they being stopped and interrogated as much when they are in U-Hauls?

If we have a certain place that we are supposed to be relegated to or if we are not subject to the Fourth Amendment like any other American then why not just tell us? But in the mean time stop pretending that racial profiling is something that is innocent and good police work when it is and always will be in many cases, harassment.

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I replied:

My example was indeed that a security agent had three minutes to interview a black American man, an Asian American woman, and a Saudi visitor named Mahmood before deciding whether they'd be allowed to board a cross-country airliner. To concentrate on the Saudi is "racial profiling," and I will stand by my position that when lives depend on it, the security officer should certainly sacrifice "political correctness" for common sense, and spend most of his time quizzing Mr. Mahmood. (Which is not to say that law-abiding Arab-Americans should be rounded up or systematically harassed, of course.)

As to the question of police either profiling or harassing young black men, I was raised a hand-wringing, guilt-wracked liberal; I've wept my tears and cursed the wind about How Terrible Things Are, and I'm thoroughly sick of it.

What I'm especially sick of is promoting "solutions" that don't work.

Let me tell you what happens when a police department is told to stop "racial profiling." The cops go, "What, we're not supposed to pull over a car with three or four young black or Hispanic men in it, which appears to be driving slowly through a wealthy neighborhood, casing homes for a burglary?" The cops are told, "No, no one has told you to stop doing police work. We just can't use racial profiling. You have to stop every car that's doing that, no matter who's in it."

For a few days, the cops pull over wealthy white women who are driving slowly through suburban neighborhoods because they can't read the house numbers while looking for their friend's baby shower. Then one of the women pulled over turns out to be the mayor's wife, and the police chief gets called in and read the riot act.

"OK, cut the crap; Stop pulling over middle-class white people," the men are told.

"But that's what you told us to do, so we wouldn't be 'racial profiling,' " the men complain. "What do we do now?"

We all know the answer. They go back to racial profiling, but they lie about it.

The problem is, cops who are living a lie become increasingly insular. They see the world as "us against them" and won't even socialize with non-cops, for fear a chance remark will betray the lies they're forced to live with. They become increasingly surly, hostile, and dismissive to any "civilian," since "civilians" not only doesn't understand "the way things are on the street," but actually demand that the cops lie to them about "the way things are on the street" -- and threaten to ruin their careers if they ever dare tell the truth in public.

This is very unhealthy for any society.

Here's what might work: Repeal all the drug and gun laws. Not only are they enforced in a racist manner, they were originally conceived and authored with racist intent. (Who carried "cheap Saturday night specials"? Urban black folk, of course. Ban 'em. The far more deadly long guns favored by white people? No problem. Who consumed marijuana, cocaine and opium? Mexicans, blacks, and Asians, of course. Ban 'em. The drug that causes the most deaths in this country -- violent deaths as well as traffic fatalities? Alcohol, favored by white people. No problem.)

When a cop sees a young black man walking down the street sucking on a reefer and sporting a gun in a hip holster, nothing any more criminal is taking place than if a cop sees a fat white guy sucking on a stogie while loading his deer rifles into the car for a hunting trip. In each case, a subject is consuming a consciousness-altering drug while handling firearms. Yet -- in a nation where the 2nd and 14th Amendments guarantee everyone the right to bear arms, and where the 9th Amendment guarantees every adult the right to consume any drug he pleases -- no crime is committed unless or until either of these fellows brandishes his weapon at someone else in a threatening manner.

Yet which of these two men is going to get arrested -- heck, drop-kicked and shot on sight if he refuses to "kiss the ground and spread 'em"?

Many of my readers will recoil in horror at the prospect of a cop smiling, tipping his hat, and driving peacefully past a young black or Hispanic man walking down the street, smoking a marijuana cigarette and sporting a loaded pistol on his hip.

"Why, he could be on his way to murder an enemy gang member!" they will shriek.

That's because they're racists, and they should admit it. When a cop straps on his gun in the morning, do we worry "He might be planning to murder someone today"? (Statistically, cops kill lots of innocent bystanders and unarmed suspects -- far more than are killed by "civilians" with concealed-carry permits.) When only the police have guns, we live in a police state. Folks who seek the "safety" of a police state are free to move somewhere where there is no 2nd or 14th Amendment -- America's remain fully in effect, thank God.

Yet will "the leaders of the black community" and so-called "civil libertarians" join with me in calling for an end to the very laws which lead police to figure they may "get a good bust" if they pull over and search a car containing young black or Hispanic men who may possess "illegal" drugs and weapons?

Noooo. These "leaders of the black community" whine that they want more of a police-state presence in their neighborhoods, to "clean out the gang and drug problems."

The answer is to change the laws, so we could thin out our existing police force to about 1/3rd of its current strength -- enough to respond to "armed robberies in progress" but getting rid of all the plainclothes (and other) units who are doing nothing but spying on us, trying to "catch us" participating in any number of forms of non-violent consensual commerce, including prostitution and buying guns and drugs, all of which activities are protected by the 9th (and other) amendments to the Constitution.

Legalize drugs, and our current inner city drug gangs will go out of business just as quickly as did the rum-runners and Speakeasies of the 1920s, when we ended Prohibition.

Will you join me in pushing to get thousands of these racist drug and gun laws stricken from the books -- meantime teaching our fellow citizens that they have a moral duty not to enforce these racist and unconstitutional laws when they're on a jury?

Do you really want to solve the problem ... or just complain about The Injustice Of It All?

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Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. To receive his longer, better stuff, subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to Privacy Alert, 561 Keystone Ave., Suite 684, Reno, NV 89503 -- or dialing 775-348-8591. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224, or via web site www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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