BEING BLACK ON A WEEKNIGHT WARRANTS A STOP-AND-FRISK

MY SON HAS a message for Mayor Martin O'Malley: Thanks a bunch. Thanks a
million for turning the Baltimore City police loose on me.

It happened a couple of weeks back, just days before those 19 characters on
what is jokingly referred to as the Baltimore City Council showed their
utter contempt for civil liberties and the Constitution by confirming Ed
Norris as police commissioner. My son, 25 come this September, had just
walked out of a 7-Eleven store at the corner of Reisterstown Road and
Belvedere Avenue toting a bag of doughnuts.

In saner places, a 25-year-old black man emerging from a 7-Eleven with a
bag of doughnuts wouldn't be considered a crime. But America has never been
sane when the subject is young black men who have, since days of old, been
considered a public menace. So carrying a couple of doughnuts around is not
considered a normal activity but the prelude to potentially felonious mischief.

Two cops descended on my son, stopped him, frisked him "about five times,"
he estimated, and then proceeded with the third degree. Where did he live?
In the 3100 block of Garrison Ave. Why, then, was he walking along
Belvedere Avenue?

Belvedere Avenue is only one block from where he lives. In other
neighborhoods, taking a stroll through the neighborhood -- especially one
block from your house -- is considered a reasonable and healthy activity.
But not where young black men live. Taking a leisurely walk only indicates
that you have other, more sinister thoughts in mind.

"When was the last time you were arrested?" the officers wanted to know.
Notice how the officers assumed he had been arrested. They didn't ask,
"Have you ever been arrested?" My son should have told them the only time
he's been arrested was for carrying a gun to protect himself from the very
muggers these officers assumed he was. ("Where were they when I was getting
robbed in January?" my son wanted to know. It happened within a few blocks
of where he was being questioned.)

"Do you have any outstanding court dates?" was the last query, one my son
found excruciatingly stupid.

"Yeah, like I'd tell them even if I really did," he told me.

So welcome to new Baltimore policing, courtesy of the
O'Malley-Norris-Sheila Dixon regime. Maybe we should have a sign for folks
entering Baltimore that says "Welcome to Baltimore, where police will stop
you for being black on a weeknight." My son's experience smacks of a
jackboot affair to me, an illegal stop-and-frisk that sounds like a
violation of the grounds the Supreme Court laid down in Terry vs. Ohio back
in 1968. But Balti-morons are OK with it. They've said it over the airwaves
on talk radio and on the pages of this paper: As long as crime is reduced,
no violation of civil liberties or the Constitution is too great. If
homicides are reduced, anything goes.

I've always suspected that Americans, who fancy themselves democratic by
nature, are really fascistic. The Founding Fathers knew this. That's why
they drew up the Bill of Rights. If Americans were democratic by nature --
fair, just, always hankering to protect the rights of others, especially
the underdog -- we wouldn't need a Bill of Rights, which act as a kind of
protection against the Joe Stalin in us.

But if we've definitely committed to fascism now, let's do it right. Let's
be efficient about it. When the cops finished questioning my son, they let
him go on his way. That was not efficient. It left him free to return to
his apartment, where he may have committed the sinister act of eating his
doughnuts. Why, he may have sat down to watch television. Who knows what
heinous crimes that may have led to?

If we're serious about reducing crime, here's what we must do: Impose
martial law and curfews on all high-crime areas of Baltimore. Round up all
suspected drug dealers and addicts, suspend habeas corpus and jail them all
without trial. Conduct house-to-house searches to remove all guns and drugs.

Of course, some innocent folks might get tossed into the hoosegow under
this plan. But we can't quibble about minutiae like jailing an innocent
person or two, or 10, or a thousand. We're talking about reducing crime
here. And, as Balti-morons have made clear to their mayor and police
commissioner, anything goes. We'll accept any violation of our rights, as
long as the homicides go down.

Once we do this, we'll have to make an announcement to the rest of the
world that we are no longer a democracy, that we no longer believe in
freedom and rights and justice and all that nonsense. We'd have to admit
that, like the good Germans circa 1933, we are willing to trade our
freedoms for safety.

And as we all know, that German experiment with Nazism turned out well,
didn't it?