SCALES OF JUSTICE TIP TO WHITE COLLAR CRIME

A few weeks ago a guy called to discuss one of my weekly ditties,
wherein I essentially advocated for the legalization of marijuana. Not
because I think everyone should smoke it (who would eat all the pills
and drink all the vodka?), but because it doesn't make sense to fill
up our prisons with pot smokers and growers, and there is a good
argument to be made for taxing it. Especially when you can generate
millions in much-needed government funds you could use for parks,
libraries, schools and pork for the proverbial barrel.

The caller went on to detail his own running battles with law
enforcement, since he is one of many in these parts who happen to grow
marijuana, which is the county's most profitable crop (and you thought
it was grapes).

"They (cops) came into our home in the middle of the night, guns and
shotguns drawn, dragged us nude out of our beds, threw us on the floor
and handcuffed us," the caller told me. "Seems they could have handled
it differently."

By different he might mean the way they handle white-collar criminals.
I don't remember a single arrest of a so-called white-collar criminal
where cops made the arrest in the middle of the night, guns drawn, and
dragged the suspect(s) out of bed nude. And there is no data to
suggest that white-collar criminals don't sleep naked, or that they
don't have weapons in the home. Last I heard, Dick Cheney had a
shotgun, and I suspect Enron's Kenneth Lay had a handgun or two in one
of his many mansions.

For those who may not know the difference between blue and
white-collar crime, it goes something like this:

Blue collar: Walk into a bank, tell the clerk you have a bomb tucked
inside your Banana Republics and demand $100,000. If captured instead
of shot 38 times, you spend 25 years looking down at Bubba from the
top bunk of your jail cell.

White collar: Steal $100,000 from the bank vault you are supposed to
be keeping an eye on and, when an auditor finds out, wait for the
phone to ring so you'll have time to put on the makeup for the police
mug shot (or provide a high school yearbook photo). As soon as the
fingerprinting is done, go home on what they refer to as your "own
recognizance," which means everyone who is anyone knows you from the
local service club or inner circle. You eventually apologize and agree
to a plea bargain that requires you to repay the money you stole, but
there is no jail time. After all, you only stole the money because
your aunt needed shoes and gasoline prices had climbed above $3.25 a
gallon.

The scales of justice have never been balanced, no matter what the
beautiful Latin script on courthouse walls tries to tell us.

According to the FBI, the term white-collar crime was coined in 1939
by some professor and has since become synonymous with a full range of
frauds committed by business and government officials.

Some examples include adoption scams, antitrust scams, bank fraud,
Medicare fraud, securities scams, investment fraud, lottery scams,
mass marketing scams, identity theft, insurance fraud and a host of
others. There's no end to the ways to take advantage of trusting and
unsuspecting people.

Most of the time, white-collar crooks prey on folks (such as retirees)
who can least afford to lose the money.

In an editorial following the discovery of four prominent citizens who
had defrauded local health-care programs, which led to the bankruptcy
filing of the community hospital, the Roanoke Times & World News noted
that, "White-collar crime rarely prompts the outrage or draws the
lengthy prison sentences of street crimes.

"It leaves no violated or bleeding victim; its perpetrators are often
church-going community leaders who stand before the judge wearing
tailored suits and repentant expressions. Yet, such financial crimes
can devastate an entire community rather than robbing a lone victim.
Their impact can last for years, stealing crucial services or
lifetime's savings through crimes invisible to their victims."

The suspects in that case, the editorial noted, acted not out of need,
but greed.

As he waits for his own legal troubles to make their way through the
local judicial system, my pot-growing telephone friend must be
wondering just a little bit about those scales of justice that Equity
holds in its hands.

He might also be wondering how he'd look in a white-collared
shirt.