BURNING QUESTION

A team of 10 police tactical teamed officers approached the house at 1341
19th St. S., St. Petersburg, to execute a search warrant just the way they
practiced it. Officer Brian Taylor was assigned to be third in the door.
After hearing a teammate knock and announce, "Police, Search Warrant,"
Taylor and other officers heard what sounded like footsteps coming from
inside the house. They concluded that it was probably the suspects inside
running downstairs. When Taylor entered the home he stood at the top of
those stairs behind another officer with a bulletproof shield.

Though he hadn't heard any gunfire, been attacked, or even seen any
suspects at this point, Taylor decided that a bulletproof shield wasn't
enough protection to investigate the lower floor of the apartment. He would
have to use a distraction device that emits an intense burst of light and a
loud bang to disorient suspects.

"For safety reasons it was discussed about utilizing a distraction device
prior to team members going down into the bottom floor area, if the team
was jeopardized prior to entering the bottom floor," he stated in a report
following the mission.

Whether the hazard was obvious is up for debate, but no one is debating
what happened next. Taylor lobbed the device. It exploded, caused a fire
and burned the house down.

Judging by the tactics it would seem that the officers were entering the
home to search for a stockpile of unlicensed weapons. Or maybe amounts of
cocaine so vast the officers would put it in a big pile and take pictures
standing next to it, showing the press and the public how hundreds of drug
users wouldn't be getting high thanks to them.

Appearances can be deceiving.

The search was supposed to result in the seizure of some marijuana, and
likely not in an amount worthy of photographs. What the search actually
resulted in was embarrassment for the St. Petersburg Police Department. The
house was destroyed and no one was arrested as the hypothetical evidence
went up in smoke.

The incident could almost be funny. Picture the police "tactical" or TAC
team exploding into the house like commandos then rushing back out, much
like Keystone Kops, moments later when the fire they set raged quickly out
of controlled.

What's not funny is that it didn't happen in some slapstick movie. It
happened in a house where real people lived and worked, and it happened in
the black community where police work too often resembles military occupation.

The police department defends itself by saying that it raided the house on
legitimate police business. The fire is termed "unfortunate."

That doesn't play well with police critics. Chimurenga Waller, president of
the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement called the incident an
outrage. "Our whole community was attacked when they attacked that house,"
he said.

Kevin Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy, a Washington, D.C.,
group fighting for saner drug laws, said this attack is neither surprising
nor is it uncommon. Police departments target poorer minority communities
and use stronger tactics because it's relatively easy and consequence free,
Zeese said. "It's less risky to go out to the poor communities, they don't
have as much money for lawyers."

National statistics prove that in the war on drugs the black community is
the top law enforcement battleground. According to research done by Human
Rights Watch in 1996, blacks make up about 62 percent of prisoners
incarcerated on drug charges, compared with 36 percent who are white. Black
men are admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate about 13 times
that of white men, the study said. On average, 482 of every 100,000 black
men sentenced to prison are sent there on drug charges, compared with just
36 of every 100,000 white men.

Even if they can get a lawyer, Zeese said, prosecutors and judges harbor
racist attitudes -- just like cops. Because more minorities are targeted
than whites, more of them are arrested. This makes for a system that is
harsher for minorities because the law enforcement players at every stage
think black or brown skin is synonymous with criminal behavior.

The U.S. Department of Justice found that of the drug offenders appearing
in state court 37 percent are white and 61 percent are black. The
percentage of whites given probation or non-incarceration is 32 percent
compared with 25 percent of blacks. The percentage of black drug felons
sentenced to state prison is 43 percent compared with just 27 percent of
whites.

This injustice caused by faulty perceptions is not likely to change under
the Bush administration. President Bush's proposed drug czar, John Waters,
was quoted in the Weekly Standard saying, "What really drives the battle
against law enforcement and punishment however, is not a commitment to
treatment, but the widely held view that 1. We are imprisoning too many
people for merely possessing illegal drugs, 2. Drug and other criminal
sentences are too long and harsh and 3. The criminal justice system is
unjustly punishing young black men. These are the great urban myths of our
time."

Waters has access to plenty of data that would show that the real urban
myth of our time is that the war on drugs is effective and equitable. He
just doesn't want to accept that reality.

The reality is that whites use drugs at a higher per capita rate than
blacks, said Zeese, and they tend to buy from other whites. College kids
sell and use marijuana in their dorm rooms and wealthy whites sell and use
marijuana in their homes or at their place of business.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the chances
of a white person ever trying an illicit drug is 42 percent compared with
37.7 percent of blacks. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control
conclude that the number of white high school students currently using
cocaine in the U.S. is 4.1 percent compared to 1.1 percent of black high
school students.

That last statistic is worth repeating: White high school kids are almost
four times more likely to use cocaine than black youths.

Waller wants to create an outcry about police tactics in St. Petersburg. He
wants an apology from the city of St. Petersburg and a commitment to deal
with the problem. "I think it (the apology) would send a signal that the
city of St. Petersburg is interested in economic development and not in
criminalizing a community and carrying out military activities in a
community that has been traditionally oppressed, not just in St. Petersburg
but in this country."

By remaining silent, Waller said, the message is that the answer to
oppression is a full-scale raid by a SWAT team on an alleged search for
marijuana. "And then the police just say, "Oops we made a mistake, we can't
arrest anybody because we burned up the evidence.'"
There are a lot of theories about why so many more blacks are arrested on
drug charges than whites, but one that few dispute is that it's because the
police can use heavy-handed tactics in poorer black communities that they
wouldn't dream of using in more affluent white communities. The result is
that prisons fill with low-level drug dealers and users, while the flow of
drugs into the minority community continues virtually unchecked.

The St. Petersburg police claim they employ the same tactics in the black
community that they do in the white community. Since many of their tactics
are not available for public scrutiny, it's hard to say whether that's
true. But it's difficult to imagine a SWAT team showing up in Coffeepot
Bayou looking for relatively small amounts of marijuana -- as the police
did on 19th Street South.

The investigation that led to the search warrant at 1341 19th St. was
typical of the way drug investigations are handled in most minority
communities, said Zeese. Poor minorities tend to take more risks, selling
drugs on the streets and in other open areas. Because they're visible, they
get arrested more often and are persuaded to turn informant. Who do they
inform on. Typically the only people they know, said Zeese, other blacks.
This is one reason why it's easier to arrest people -- even ones who aren't
selling drugs openly -- in minority communities. It's much harder to get
into that college dorm room or into that Bayshore Boulevard mansion.

According to police reports, a confidential informant purchased $40 worth
of marijuana from Craig Johnson, a resident at the house on 19th Street, on
three separate occasions. The identity of the informant is, of course,
under wraps but he or she reported seeing "several cigar boxes" and a paper
bag containing weed. Marijuana is illegal in any amount but this was hardly
the mother lode. The police used these buys to obtain a search warrant of
Johnson's house. The informant did not indicate that there were any weapons
visible or that there were any hostages tied up in the living room, but the
search was considered "high risk." For police, high risk is supposed to
mean dangerous, but it often means black. Ultimately what it meant was that
a tactical team of 10 officers would be deployed to execute the search.
They arrived armed with bulletproof shields and flash-bang devices the
manufacturer claims are " designed to be deployed by tactical teams during
high-risk warrants, hostage rescues and barricaded-subject situations."

After the spark given off by the flash-bang turned into an inferno, two men
fleeing the house were stopped by the police. The interviews were also
typical of the kinds of liberties cops can take with minority suspects.
Police asked the dreadlocked men irrelevant questions like, "Are you a
Rastafarian." Rastafarians are a religious group out of Jamaica that claim
late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie as a spiritual leader and are
generally stereotyped as marijuana users. Asking a suspected marijuana user
if they're Rastafarian is like asking a suspected drunken driver if they're
Irish -- it plays to a negative stereotype and doesn't prove anything one
way or the other.

Even if the two had smoked marijuana, and one man admitted that he had
before coming to the house that evening, it doesn't mean that he was
selling it or that he would possess quantities it would take an army to
confiscate.

More than $300 in cash was taken from another man as evidence, even though
he was never arrested for anything.

It's possible that the police did have a valid reason for using a 10-man
team and a distraction device meant for crisis situations to subdue two men
suspected of selling $40 bags of weed. We'd all like to hear it. Probably
nobody more than Craig Johnson and the group called Lion Face who lost
their investment of reportedly more than $100,000 in recording equipment
and master recordings of more than 300 songs, intellectual property that's
irreplaceable and could have been worth millions.

Police spokesman Rick Stelgis said he is unable to comment on matters of
police tactics. He did however comment on the fire. "It's very unfortunate
that this occurred," he said. "But I don't think we should lose sight of
the fact that the officers were there in a legitimate capacity."

Members of the group have retained an attorney, Waller said, and are
refusing interviews while the incident is still under investigation. Waller
is not a spokesman for the group. However, he has spoken with them and said
that members of the group are fearful of the police. They fear that the
police will want to file charges that are just as heavy-handed as their
tactics.

"I think they fear that the police and the city of St. Petersburg want out
of this situation. This was a terrible situation that the police created
and they want out of that. And there are a number of ways that the police
may feel that the way out is," said Waller.

One way is through intimidation. Waller claimed that a resident of the
house is being followed by police. "I don't understand the reason for that,
if you burned up his house, why are you following him."
Stelgis contended that while investigation of the incident is still
ongoing, there's no intimidation going on.

Waller is not asserting that the rap group was made up of choirboys.
They're a group of young men with some interesting motivations for making
music. "There was a young man named Marcus Toots. He was killed four or
five years ago and he was a very good friend of Craig Johnson. That was the
turning point for them," says Waller.

The group was involved in "some things" that weren't correct, Waller said,
and with the death of their friend they decided to turn their lives around
and do music. They pooled their money and saved for years to accomplish
their goal.

"I think that that should be rewarded but apparently the city of St.
Petersburg doesn't feel that way," said Waller.

According to the police department, both the owner of the residence and the
renters have filed claims seeking reparations. As for an apology from the
city or the police department, Stelgis said it's just too early to
speculate on whether that will happen. The police department is being
cautious in its statements probably due to pending legal issues, but the
department's silence on its tactics in black neighborhoods is upsetting
some members of the community. Following the incident about 60 people from
various neighborhood groups protested outside the police department. A
similar demonstration was held at the burned-out house.

By demonstrating, Waller said, protestors are trying to show the community
that what happened was wrong and encourage citizens to speak out against
heavy-handed police tactics. "If you want to serve a warrant and search the
property you knock on the door and say, "I want to search the house.'
That's what they do in the white community," he said. Waller and others in
the community would like to see the police department lose what critics
feel is a look-down-the-nose attitude toward blacks. According to Randall
Marshall, state legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union in
Miami, it's this superiority bias that causes most problems in the first
place. "What people are offended by are the disrespectful attitudes that
officers can bring into a minority community." It's been nearly five years
since riots were sparked by the police slaying of TyRon Lewis. Riots don't
occur because of a single police action. Rather, the police action is a
spark that ignites to a long fuse. The fuse is made up of a string of
incidents: the traffic stop that turns into harassment, the questioning of
a black man's right to drive a nice car, the fear and resentment of hostile
police presence and leadership that refuses to address the minority
community's concerns.

For that reason, someone has to be accountable for the charred remains of
Craig Johnson's home and dreams on 19th Street. People are waiting for the
city to step up to the plate. The incident occurred in the city's District
6, but the area's council member Earnest Williams hasn't made a public
statement about a situation that many find appalling and frightening.
Williams is concerned about the incident, he said, but he's waiting for the
investigation to be complete before he makes any comment.

"I'm concerned about whether the (distraction) device should be used any
further," he said.

Williams claims he hasn't gotten a single call from the community about the
fire, not even from Waller. "But I'm sure there are people out there who
are concerned just like I'm concerned." At a recent City Council meeting
community members who spoke up on the issue were met with an attitude
varying from indifference to boredom. Some were upset that Williams left
the meeting before his constituents even got up to speak. He had returned
from vacation at 3 a.m. and was at the meeting until 10 p.m., he said. He
left because he was ill.

Williams said he does not agree that the police unfairly target those in
his district. In fact, he believes that what's needed is more enforcement.
He thinks that more community members should report drug activity in their
neighborhoods, more drug marches should be done, and more drug prevention
programs should be targeted at the city's youth.

When it comes to drug sales and use, Williams said that money isn't an
issue. "What do economics have to do with drugs." he asks. "For some, they
make it an economic issue."

People have a choice to get an education and avoid the pitfalls of the drug
trade, he said.

Waller doesn't believe it's that simple and would like to see departing
Police Chief Goliath Davis replaced with someone who can take a more
community-sensitive approach to enforcing drug laws.

"The people are being terrorized and this can't go on," Waller said.

The Uhuru group intends to hold a public meeting to discuss the way that
the new police chief will be chosen and to consider how the community can
influence the process. They feel it's important that the new chief see the
importance of economic development in high-crime areas. The activists
contend that crime flourishes in poverty and the solution to poverty is not
to build more jails so that police can arrest more poor people.

The new chief should also continue to enforce Davis' edict that officers
treat everyone in every community with respect. Davis' attitude has gone a
long way to improve tension between the black community and the police,
said department spokesman Stelgis, and few in the community would dispute
that. Most would like to see that progress continue.

"Davis went a long way into cutting off some of the kinds of activities
that he's now saying is OK," Waller said, referring to statements Davis
made to the press supporting the police in the house torching. "I think
he's in a difficult position because the police have done something wrong
and he is the police."