Note: That the problems discussed in this article are a consequence of the
drug war, becomes evident as the article progresses.

TRUST IN POLICE HAS SLIPPED

After Recent Scandals In New York And L.A., Minorities Say They Are Even
Warier Of Police.

Carlos Ortiz doesn't know what to think of the cops anymore.

"Do I trust them? No, I don't trust them," says the South Bronx teenager as
if the question itself was ridiculous. "I just try not to run from them,
'cause they're shooting now."

To many, the depth of Carlos's distrust is indicative of a crumbling of the
criminal-justice system in many urban areas - seen in the police's loss of
credibility. From the shooting and brutality trials in New York to
revelations of widespread corruption in Los Angeles, law-enforcement
officials have been thrust into the spotlight as lawbreakers, undermining
their legitimacy and the trust of the people they're supposed to serve,
particularly in minority communities.

"The justice system requires trust to function," says Randall Kennedy of
Harvard University Law School in Cambridge, Mass., and author of "Race,
Crime and the Law." "All sorts of bad things happen when the guardians of
law and order lose their legitimacy."

[PHOTO of African-American woman on the street, talking to reporter.
Caption: "WARY OF POLICE: 'These are people you're supposed to call in an
emergency ... but you fear them,' says security guard Keimone Williams (above).
THOMAS DALLAL - SPECIAL TO THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR"]

Experts say many witnesses are now less willing to cooperate, and juries
are more skeptical of police testimony, making it more difficult for
prosecutors to win convictions. The steady erosion of trust also undercuts
police effectiveness in fighting crime.

"Put aside all of the DNA labs and all of the great police theory. There's
nothing more important to effective law enforcement than the cooperation of
the community," says George Kendall, staff attorney of the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund's Criminal Justice Project. "I'm sure there are people today
who are sitting by the phone who could help the police solve a crime, but
who won't pick up the telephone for fear that they're not going to be
treated fairly. That's an unhappy state of affairs."

The erosion of trust is probably most pronounced in places like South
Central Los Angeles, where an officer now alleges police routinely planted
evidence, lied, and roughed up and framed innocent suspects. In South
Bronx, distrust of police is at an all-time high, more than a year after an
unarmed African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, was killed. But it's also not new.

A survey done just prior to the shooting a year ago found that only 11
percent of Bronx residents thought police treated people fairly, and 16
percent said they felt confident in dealing with police. Only 8 percent
believed police treat people with respect.

"They always feel like they're being treated like suspects, and when that
happens, it creates tremendous cynicism," says Prof. Richard Fox of Union
College in Schenectady, who conducted the study.

And while the distrust may be extreme in the South Bronx, it is reflected
in minority communities nationwide. A study done by DecisionQuest, a trial
consulting company, found that 44 percent of African-Americans were less
likely to believe police as a result of the recent scandals. That's
compared with 18 percent of whites.

The trend disturbs Craig Morris, a cheerful anger-management counselor in
the Bronx. He says he knows there are good cops, and some helped him
immensely when he was a teenager. But he's also accustomed to being stopped
and harassed by police in the neighborhood. "It's like they're a gang, they
stick together ... they cover each other's back when there's scandals and
such," he says.

Many police experts blame the increasing tension between police and
minority communities on a series of Supreme Court rulings that have given
police wider authority to stop presumed suspects, combined with the
aggressive, militaristic policing tactics favored in New York and Los Angeles.

Many of those tactics, including the controversial "stop and frisk"
policies of the NYPD, came into being when crime and drug use were
spiraling out of control. Then-police commissioner William Bratton says he
specifically designed them to be interim strategies in 1994 and 1995 to
"take back the streets." Once that was accomplished, the next step was to
bring in more police on the precinct level to improve community outreach.

But Mr. Bratton says Mayor Rudolph Giuliani consistently thwarted efforts
to reach out to leaders in minority communities because it clashed with his
"get tough" agenda.

"So you've got strategies that were intended ... to be adjusted to a
changing city. Instead, they've not only remained the same, but have been
ramped up in terms of enforcement activity, particularly in minority
neighborhoods," says Bratton.

While the factors that led to the more aggressive policing tactics are
different in Los Angeles, James McNamara of the Hoover Institute says the
end result is the same: Some officers have lost the vision of what a police
officer's job should be.

"The role of police in a free society is not that of a soldier," says Mr.
McNamara, whose coming book is titled "Gangsta Cops: The Hidden Cost of
America's War on Drugs." "The soldier's job is to kill the enemy, a police
officer's job is to protect and serve."

That confusion of roles has been exacerbated by the Supreme Court,
according to several experts. In its efforts to aid police in the war on
drugs, it has given them wide discretion in determining when to stop
people, in some cases infringing on people's Fourth Amendment rights. "Once
they're free from that requirement, the police tend to fall back on
stereotypes linking race and crime, and that's what creates the double
standard," says David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center
in Washington.

But it also creates frustration for people like Keimone Williams, security
guard and mother of two who lives in the Bronx. She knows that crime is
down in her neighborhood and wants to give police credit for that. But
she's also extremely wary of them.

"It's scary because these are people you're supposed to call in an
emergency, or if someone's hurt, but you fear them," she says. "If you
can't call these people, where do you go?"