Stop and Frisk, War on Drugs

Liberal Illusions and Racist Law and Order

On August 12, U.S. District Court judge Shira Scheindlin in Manhattan ruled that the NYPD’s practice of routinely stopping and frisking blacks and Latinos was unconstitutional. Since 2004, the cops have made over 4.5 million such stops, under what Scheindlin called a “policy of indirect racial profiling.” The same day, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, motivated by the need to reduce the enormous financial costs of mass incarceration, announced proposals to bypass the draconian mandatory minimum sentences for federal drug charges. These two pronouncements were hailed in the bourgeois press as signaling a sea change in longstanding “tough on crime” policies—code for targeting black people who suffer daily brutalization and humiliation by the racist cops and courts. What is in the offing is nothing of the sort.

Scheindlin ordered a federal monitor to oversee police reforms, such as putting body cameras on some cops. In an August 12 editorial, the New York Times gushed that Scheindlin “upheld the bedrock principle of individual liberty.” Similarly effusive was the reformist Workers World Party in its article “NYC ‘Stop and Frisk’ Gets Court Slapdown” (13 August). Endorsing the view that the ruling “was just the beginning of a long struggle for real change,” Workers World conveyed its own fatuous optimism through the words of the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which brought the lawsuit. The CCR head declared: “This administration has created bike lanes throughout the city and is waging a major campaign to ban big sodas. If they can put that effort into bike lanes and big sodas, then they can make necessary changes to stop the unconstitutional harassment of millions of New Yorkers.”

More grounded in reality was a New York Times (14 August) op-ed piece titled “Racial Profiling Lives On” by Devin Carbado, Cheryl Harris and Kimberle Williams Crenshaw. The authors pointed out that Scheindlin’s decision “does nothing to disrupt the authority the Supreme Court has given police officers to target African-Americans and Latinos with little or no basis.” This authority gives the cops “frighteningly wide discretion to follow, stop, question, frisk and employ excessive force against African-Americans and Latinos who have shown virtually no indication of wrongdoing.”

In our article “Stop-and-Frisk Trial and Bogus Police ‘Reform’” (WV No. 1022, 19 April), we noted that if the judge “rules for the cops, they will no doubt feel more emboldened as they mete out their daily dose of racist brutality. If she rules against the NYPD, stripping this practice of its legal license, the cops will no doubt move to repackage their systematic abuse.” Indeed, Scheindlin explicitly stated she was “not ordering an end to the practice of stop-and-frisk.” Even so, the city is appealing the ruling, with Mayor Michael Bloomberg haughtily declaring: “You’re not going to see any change in tactics overnight.”

The billionaire Bloomberg had good reason to make this promise. As has been the case with countless police “reforms” across the country—from civilian review boards to federal oversight—Scheindlin’s ruling, along with similar measures adopted by the New York City Council, will serve only to refurbish the cops’ image, making the thugs in blue more effective in carrying out their dirty work. The cold, hard fact is that the cops—white, black or Latino—harass, terrorize and brutalize the ghettos and barrios because as the enforcers of racist “law and order” that is their job. So, for example, NYC police commissioner Ray Kelly—who rolled out stop-and-frisk to “instill fear” in black and Latino youth—was praised as an “outstanding” candidate to head the Department of Homeland Security by President Obama.

Rivaling the rose-colored view of a kinder, gentler NYPD was the illusion that Holder’s announcement would make more than an insignificant dent in the mass imprisonment of blacks and Latinos. In that August 12 speech, the first black attorney general talked up how “too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long” while also praising the Obama administration’s efforts to build up the police forces that send them there. Holder was subsequently given a place of honor at the March on Washington commemoration, which attracted tens of thousands of black people who are fed up with the injustice that defines their daily lives, most recently highlighted in the acquittal of the racist vigilante who blew away Trayvon Martin. From the speakers’ platform, Holder—the top cop overseeing the entire apparatus of racist capitalist injustice—addressed the families and friends of his many victims.

It is conceivable that Holder’s plan might mitigate the numbers sent to do hard time for drug “crimes,” although its beneficiaries will overwhelmingly not be black people. All Holder did was direct federal prosecutors to omit the weight of drugs involved when drafting an indictment. This information will still be considered by U.S. attorneys when deciding who to prosecute and could be placed in evidence at trial. It also will be available to judges during sentencing.

Holder’s proposal is also cheap given that most prosecutions take place in state courts, over whose prosecutors Holder & Co. have no authority. In federal prosecutions, it would apply only to “certain” drug offenders who have no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs or cartels and no significant criminal history. For instance, the case cannot “involve violence,” the use of a weapon or sales to minors.

Branding blacks and Latinos for having “gang” connections is second nature to prosecutors, at both the federal and state levels. Thanks to the “war on drugs,” many minority youth are already saddled with a criminal history. Furthermore, the judges—like the one in Florida who did everything possible to make sure Trayvon Martin’s killer walked free—will no doubt find fewer occasions for leniency for blacks and Latinos than for white people facing similar charges. If anything, Holder’s directive will widen the racial disparity in incarceration.

While we favor any measures mitigating the drug laws, no amount of tinkering will change their reactionary nature or racist enforcement. We call for the decriminalization of drugs, just as we call for abolishing all other laws against victimless “crimes.” This or that measure may help decelerate but won’t stop the disproportionate imprisonment of blacks. With black oppression ingrained in American capitalism, racist cop terror and the vast numbers warehoused in prison will continue to be the grim reality until the multiracial working class takes power and sweeps the entire apparatus of capitalist state repression into the dustbin of history.