RACISM CALLS THE SHOTS IN DRUG WAR, SUIT SAYS

Minority Cops Allege They Get Riskier Jobs

For the past four years, the Chicago Police Department's war on drugs has
been shadowed by another battle, this one happening behind the scenes and
pitting dozens of black and Hispanic narcotics officers against their white
colleagues and supervisors.

The issue, according to court papers and interviews with some of the police
officers involved, is one that has long divided the police department: race
and, in particular, how it has played out in the workplace.

In this lawsuit, however, the workplace is not an office -- but the
streets, alleys and abandoned buildings where police officers make the
undercover drug buys that account for so much of the work of the
department's Narcotics Section.

To officers Sterling Watson, Sharon Wise, Guillermo Perez and others, race
drove the Narcotics Section. It put the minority officers in risky
positions, often without weapons to protect themselves or radios to call
for help when working undercover.

Meantime, they say, white colleagues often did surveillance from the safety
of their unmarked cars, armed with weapons and wearing bulletproof vests.

Then, the officers charge, race cut them out of lucrative overtime
opportunities that go with testifying during grand jury hearings or in
court. The backup officers in the cars, they say, frequently were assigned
courtroom duties.

"The attitude was, 'Let the minorities make the buys. They can do that,'"
said Wise, one of 81 current and former drug officers who filed a
class-action lawsuit against the city alleging Narcotics Section
discrimination.

"But if you look around," she added, "the customers are all white and black
and whatever. So anybody can buy. It doesn't have to be just minorities."

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, represents one of the
more protracted fights in the department over race. It was filed in early
1994, after all, and there is no sign it will soon be resolved.

The lawsuit also opens a window to police attitudes and, perhaps,
misconceptions about drugs -- who buys them, who sells them and who uses
them. And, the officers say, the notion that minorities fuel the nation's
drug problem had driven the force's alleged discrimination.

Nancy Van Allen, the assistant corporation counsel defending the
department, declined to comment through a Law Department spokeswoman. In
court papers, though, the city has vigorously fought the lawsuit, denying
discrimination.

Assistant Deputy Supt. Michael Hoke, the former Narcotics Section commander
who now is in charge of the Internal Affairs Division but was named in the
lawsuit, also declined to comment. The department's spokesman, Kevin P.
Morrison, declined comment as well.

City attorneys, however, have acknowledged in the court papers that race
can be a factor in undercover assignments and that it is justified as a
"business necessity." They are emphatic that it is not a race-based policy,
though. They say race is used on some occasions as "one factor" in and
undercover assignment.

"...In certain street operations," the city wrote in one court document
filed in the case, "operational necessity requires that black and Hispanic
officers act as the buyers in order to complete the narcotics transaction."

Federal government studies, though, suggest more whites use drugs -- and
likely buy them -- than do blacks. In 1996, the U.S. Bureau of Justice
Statistics said, 681,008 whites were arrested for narcotic violations
nationally, compared with 433,352 blacks.

Moreover, a national household survey found there were 9.7 million while
drug users in 1996c compared with 1.8 million black users and 1.1 million
Hispanic drug users.

A study that tilts in the other direction, according to the Bureau of
Justice statistics, charted the rate of drug use in the same year -- about
7.5 percent for blacks, 6.1 percent for whites and 5.2 percent for
Hispanics/

Watson, Wise and Perez, he three lead plaintiffs in the suit, said the
filed it after growing increasingly frustrated working in the Narcotic
Section.

Often, they said, they were assigned to be the "buy" officers -- the
officers actually dealing face to face with the real drug dealers. Their
colleagues -- most of them white, they allege -- were in their police cars
doing surveillance.

"There is always a real high stress level. You're unarmed. You're not
wearing a vest. It's dangerous," Wise said of portraying narcotics buyers.
"You don't know whether they are going to serve you or if they're going to
rob you."

Watson said he once worked in uniform after the Chicago Bulls had won a
basketball championship, then he was sent back to the same area on an
undercover buy. He said he desperately feared being identified as a police
officer.

Wise said some officers began to treat her as if she was a drug user
herself because she had adopted so well the mannerisms and street language
of the dealer.

"If you were a buy officer, you were looked down upon, treated
differently," Wise said. "I tried to say, 'Hey, I'm not a hype.' You know,
an addict. 'I'm just playing one.' But that's what they start thinking."

Their commanders, they said, explained the assignments by saying that
blacks were more believable working undercover as drug buyers, especially
in poorer neighborhoods -- even though top police officials have, in the
past, said that white suburban drug buyers were a particular scourge in the
city.

"It's the classic, stereotype argument where there's a patina of truth,"
said J. Reed Millsaps, one of the attorneys for the officers. "but if you
examine the facts, you see it doesn't really make sense. And, even if that
stereotype is true, there should be some way to address all the inequities."

Watson said white officers sometimes beg off more dangerous work, although
some do make the buys.

"If white officers say they're not comfortable, they don't have to go,"
Watson said. "But if we say, 'I'm not comfortable,' they just push you out
there and say, 'Give it a shot.' They don't care whether we're comfortable."

Said Karen Black, another attorney for the officers: "Everyone knows there
is a risk in buying. The problem is that not everyone shares the risk."

The city, in court papers, acknowledged the risks of working in the
Narcotics Section and admitted that the buy officers often work without
bulletproof vests and other protections. But the city said the buy officers
choose whether to be armed; they also argued that there was no evidence
that those officers faced a greater risk than their armed colleagues.

"...All officers involved in street operations," the city said in court
papers, "are exposed to a degree of psychological stress and physical
danger."

But Watson, Wise and Perez said it is worse for the buy officers.

These same issues figured in a class-action lawsuit filed in federal court
in 1997 by black agents working undercover for the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration.

The agents won the lawsuit, as well as later appeals, after judges
determined that the black agents were ordered to make a disproportionate
number of undercover purchases. Because of that, they never got the
experience needed to be promoted.

Watson, Wise and Perez said the same thing happened in the city's unit.
Despite the prestige associated with working in the drug war, chances for
promotion were elusive because minority officers were primarily assigned to
do small buys, they said.

Since they began to complain, Watson and Perez have been transferred to the
department's mass-transit unit, patrolling the subway stations. Wise
remains in the Narcotics Section.