The Prison Explosion, Part 1b

BLACKS FEEL TARGETED FOR DRUG ARRESTS

It's happened to a pastor, a county legislator, a school superintendent, a
social worker and a program director. All of them black, all of them male,
they've been either followed in stores, stopped while driving, confronted
while walking the street or all of the above.

"What are you doing on this side of town this late at night?" is a common
question Theodore Arrington, a Poughkeepsie school social worker says he
and other African Americans are asked by police.

Police emptied a trunk full of books from Dutchess County Legislator Mario
Johnson's car after a traffic stop. They've stopped Poughkeepsie
Superintendent of Schools Robert Watson several times, he believes, because
he drives a luxury car. And the Rev. Dwight Bolton of Smith Metropolitan
AME Zion Church was accused of shoplifting while on vacation.

These confrontations, they and others maintained, are part of a pattern of
"racial profiling" -- choosing potential crime suspects by the color of
their skin. The large number of minorities arrested, particularly for drug
crimes, is proof of that pattern, they say.

"The real proble ... is prejudice and racism," said Bolton. "There are
things people grow up believing. It's saturated in their subconscious."

Location of crime at play

Law enforcement officials see it differently.

"Unfortunately, the possession and dealing takes place for the most part in
the minority community," said Dutchess County District Attorney William
Grady. "There's no one who wants stricter law enforcement than members of
the minority community."

But it's not as if whites don't partake in the illegal drug trade: "There
is much more drug abuse in the white community than in the black
community," saidDutchess County Probation Director Patricia Resch. "But
it's behind closed doors."

The latest government survey found illicit drugs were used by 6.6 percent
of whites and 7.7 percent of African Americans.

In Dutchess County, 67 percent of all felony drug arrests in 1999 were of
blacks, though African Americans were only 8 percent of the general
population in the 1990 census.

Moreover, blacks are 85 percent of all people serving prison sentences for
drug crimes from Dutchess County -- the highest rate in the state, the
Poughkeepsie Journal found in an analysis of the state's prison population
as of February of this year. The figure for Ulster County was 57 percent,
the analysis found.

Racial profiling alleged

Dutchess ranked eighth statewide in the combined percentage of blacks and
Hispanics incarcerated for drug crimes, with 92 percent of drug sentences
being served by minorities, the Journal study found. The only counties that
ranked higher were four of the five boroughs of New York City and
Westchester, Rockland and Erie counties. All have higher percentages of
blacks than Dutchess; all but Erie have higher percentages of Hispanics.

"The justice system is not blind. There is racism in the justice system,"
said Johnson, who represents the City of Poughkeepsie in the Legislature.
"It's institutional."

As a result of a resolution introduced by Johnson, a study is to be
undertaken soon of potential racial profiling in Dutchess County, including
surveys on the practices and attitudes of police.

Going where drug sales are

Many black residents interviewed for this article agreed that it exists.
But police, judges and prosecutors -- all of them white -- disagreed,
maintaining their aim was to uphold laws and control drug trafficking and
related violence, not incarcerate blacks.

"Main Street is the corridor for dealing drugs," said Chief Ronald Knapp of
the City of Poughkeepsie police, when asked about the high numbers of
minorities arrested for drug crimes. "That is where the complaints are.
This is where the enforcement would occur." He noted that there were 50
shootings in the city in 1994 and only 10 last year, which he credited to
police cracking down on drugs.

Dutchess County has two intensive anti-drug operations that make the bulk
of the drug arrests: the city's Neighborhood Recovery Unit and the Dutchess
County Drug Task Force, which has made 452 arrests since 1995, 62 percent
of them of blacks.

Grady acknowledges Dutchess "could very well be the leader" in its
percentage of blacks in prison for drug crimes. But he said the county also
tries to keep blacks out of prison by utilizing new drug treatment
alternatives: In 1999, 48 percent of blacks convicted of drug crimes in
Dutchess went to prison as opposed to 53 percent statewide.

Dutchess, he said, "is at the forefront of innovative drug rehabilitation
programs which deal exclusively with the drug-dependent offender (who is)
almost exclusively of the minority race."

Blacks get longer sentences

While few maintain discrimination is overt, at least one report on Dutchess
County misdemeanor convictions suggests blacks and whites are sometimes
treated differently once they are in the criminal justice system. The study
of 348 misdemeanor convictions by the National Institute of Corrections
found that blacks got stiffer sentences than whites, even when their
criminal backgrounds were similar.

Among those with no prior convictions, 27 percent of blacks and 10 percent
of whites got jail or prison time. Among those with at least two prior
felony or misdemeanor convictions, 92 percent of blacks and 77 percent of
whites got a jail or prison sentence. Economic disparities may contribute
to the imbalance, experts said; for example, in the ability of poor blacks
to make bail.

"Those who have money get out and tend to stay out," said David Steinberg,
Dutchess County chief assistant public defender. "Those that don't have
money stay in." Once out of jail, many get drug treatment that can lead to
lighter sentences.

And once in, the cycle begins: "It's criminalizing a whole generation of
black men,'' said Zelbert Moore, a State University at New Paltz professor.
He noted 1.5 million black men cannot vote because of felony convictions,
which also stop them from getting jobs.

To some, the problem is lopsided enforcement. "When I lived at the corner
of Winnikee and North White, the buyers were 99 percent white," Johnson
said. "No one is stopping the buyers."

Sha-Kim Fitzgerald, a former Poughkeepsie drug dealer, now reformed,
agreed: "My money, most of it, came from Caucasians."

Buyer arrests trickier

City of Poughkeepsie police have attempted so-called "reversals" -- in
which the target is the buyer, not the seller. "Under the law, they're
difficult because of entrapment issues," said Knapp, the city police chief,
referring to the risk that a case will be thrown out if police are deemed
to have enticed someone to commit a crime they would not otherwise have
committed.

"When it comes to arresting white folks, it's entrapment,'' retorted Pete
Johnson, a black business owner in the City of Poughkeepsie and a member of
the Poughkeepsie Journal's minority advisory committee. "When it comes to
arresting black folks, it's crime."

Law enforcement officials said they have conducted drug sweeps in suburban
areas. But they were more time-consuming and expensive cases to solve, they
said, because they generally involve higher-level actors in the drug trade.

''There are more minnows in the sea than there are big fish,'' said Jere
Tierney, coordinator of the Dutchess County Drug Task Force. ''You don't
see the Columbian drug lord on Main Street. You see the poor person. You
see the young black male trying to make money.''

While drugs may be traded in suburban office settings, he said, ''It's not
a marketplace that's readily accessible to the police officers.''