NO TRUCE IN THIS WAR

The March 8 acquittal of Jeremiah Mearday marked the second time this year
that a jury has refused to convict a "high-profile" defendant accused of
attacking Chicago police officers. On Feb. 8 a jury failed to reach a
verdict on the murder charge against Jonathan Tolliver in the shooting of
Officer Michael Ceriale.

Both trials tell a story of how the nation's war on drugs is corroding
civility between cops and communities.

The Mearday case began Sept. 25, 1997, when two officers brutally assaulted
him while allegedly searching for illegal drugs. The incident sparked
allegations of police brutality that made a national splash and were
thoroughly investigated by the Chicago Police Board. After a year of study,
the board concluded two officers involved in the attack should be fired;
Police Supt. Terry Hillard took that advice.

A week following the firings of those Grand Central District cops, Mearday
was arrested by officers from the same district. Transcripts of police
radio tapes revealed officers discussing and ridiculing Mearday on the same
day as his arrest. The police denial that they had targeted Mearday
strained the credulity of the seven men and five women jurors. They
acquitted the 22-year-old Mearday.

Tolliver was not convicted of shooting Officer Ceriale during a 1998 drug
stakeout at Robert Taylor Homes. One lone juror held out and a mistrial was
declared. Interestingly, that juror was a black man who had a previous
run-in with the cops and was the closest thing to Tolliver's "peer" on the
jury. Although seven witnesses in the case recanted grand jury testimony
that they said cops forced out of them, most of the jurors apparently
bought the prosecution's argument that they recanted because of gang
intimidation. During jury deliberations, a crowd of uniformed cops clogged
the courthouse and critics charged the police were trying to intimidate the
jury into a guilty verdict. The police, including Hillard, justified the
gathering as a show of support for their fallen colleague.

"The gangbangers were in here, and they're in uniform," said Bill Nolan,
longtime president of the Fraternal Order of Police, in defending the
courtroom presence of uniformed police. Though often bombastic, Nolan's
comments usually are a good barometer of the rank and file's feelings.

Nolan also blasted the Mearday verdict and predicted Mearday would soon
break the law. "He's the type of person that is going to commit crime,"
Nolan said. It's that attitude of "us against them" that remains the core
problem between the police department and much of the black community.

The problem is a historical one that derives from the era of slavery and
Jim Crow segregation, but in recent years it has been aggravated by a
concentration of urban poverty and the infamous war on drugs. In many ways,
it's a set-up. The neighborhoods that produce youth like Tolliver and
Mearday are among the poorest in the nation. Lacking educational resources
and commercial enterprise, these communities provide few sources of
legitimate income or positive role models for the thousands of young people
born into them. Framed by this reality, many youth see the underground
economy as a logical economic option. But their choice of employment also
makes them enemy soldiers in the war on drugs. Into this mix we send
well-meaning but inexperienced young men like Michael Ceriale to fight this
war, and we sit back and watch the inevitable conflict.

We've cast cops and young black men as antagonists in this battle. The toll
is apparent on the black community as the numbers of black inmates continue
to skyrocket and jail culture grows even more pervasive.

The police are not to blame for this war; they are the foot soldiers hired
to do society's dirty work. We arm them with weapons and the power of
coercion and then turn our backs on the battle. Police then form insular
cultures and "blue walls" of silence as protection from society's indifference.

Unfortunately, that isolation nurtures the "us versus them" attitude that
sometimes justifies thuggish behavior. Nolan's bellicose reactions to the
Mearday verdict last Thursday exemplify this irrationality. "I hope it
doesn't send the signal that police are going to be punching bags, because
they are not," the FOP president told reporters. "I don't think Mr. Mearday
should feel he's immune to being arrested again."

As long as society fights the problem of substance abuse through the
criminal justice rather than the public health system, we will nurture an
insular police culture that justifies brutality in the name of war.