BLACKS SINGLED OUT IN DRUG WAR, CRITICS SAY

Walter Collins pleads guilty to crack cocaine possession in Birmingham,
Ala., district court. He drew a twoyear prison term.

By Lewis Kamb / Scripps Howard News Service

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. Arrest and conviction statistics in Alabama and
the rest of the nation prove "that the war on drugs is a discriminatory
war," say critics who see blacks being disproportionately singled out by
the law enforcement system.

That many of the people who live in poor neighborhoods are black,
police say, goes a long way toward explaining why blacks comprise the
majority of arrests for drug offenses in Alabama. After all, police say,
it is the poorest neighborhoods where vacant drug houses are the easiest
to find.

But others, like Alabaster City Councilman Bobby Harris, say
statistics reveal "a symptom of our law enforcement that targets areas
frequented by minorities."

According to the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center, blacks
comprised about 55 percent of the roughly 72,000 total drug arrests in
the state since 1990. In contrast, blacks make up about 25 percent of
the state's population.

Such disproportionate figures are not exclusive to Alabama. Blacks
comprise 12 percent of the U.S. population, but account for 35 percent
of those arrested on drug charges, according to a 1995 study by The
Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization in Washington.

"There are some crimes where you don't see the selectivity, but gee,
then you come to drug offenses," said Paul Butler, a criminal law
professor at George Washington University and former prosecutor for the
Department of Justice. "Whites are using drugs, but they're not being
arrested and going to jail for the same behavior that black people are."

The disparity in Alabama arrest figures do not mean police target
blacks for drug crimes, said Sgt. Ron Brandon, head of the MultiAgency
Drug Enforcement Team in Jefferson County, one of 27 federally funded
drug task forces in Alabama. Officers go where community members
complain and where confidential informants take them, he said.

"If it turns out that there's more blacks being arrested than
whites, that's just the way the ball bounces," Brandon said.

More often than not, police make drug busts where they find open
drug activity.

"You're not going to see this kind of blatant drug activity going on
in Vestavia Hills, where there's $250,000 homes," Brandon said. "You're
going to see it in a poor neighborhood where there's a dilapidated house
where a dealer can pay the homeowner to sit on his front porch and sell
crack."

But to say drug crimes only occur in poor, black communities would
be untrue, Councilman Harris said.

"There is somewhat of a blatant disregard for the law in many
minority communities where you will see this type of illegal activity
going on right out in the open," Harris said. "However, that doesn't
overrule the fact that there is as much, perhaps even more, of a
concentration of drugs and illegal activity in the majority sector."

Once a community is known to harbor drug activity, state law gives
police more enforcement rights there. Under the "plain feel doctrine,"
Sgt. Brandon said, police can frisk just about anyone walking down the
street for simply having a suspicious bulge in his or her pocket.

Such policies allow police to persecute blacks who live in
highcrime areas, said U.S. Rep. Earl Hilliard, DBirmingham.

    Narcotics officers will tell you dealers are more prized than users.
That's one problem with drug enforcement strategies in Alabama and
elsewhere in America, said Clarence Lusane, professor and author of the
book Pipe Dream Blues: Racism and the War on Drugs.

"It's clear that their (law enforcement's) concentration is to meet
quotas and demands by elected officials," Lusane said.

Harris agreed.

"Law enforcement should not target the low man on the totem pole,"
he added. "They need to start targeting the high man. And believe me,
the high man is not black."

Copyright 1997, The Detroit News