STATISTICS: RACE PLAYS PART IN DRUG ARRESTS

But Brown County Database Isn't Complete Picture of Issue, Experts Say

Race can be a significant factor in the type and degree of
drug-related arrests in Brown County, according to a Green Bay
Press-Gazette review of about 5 1/2 years of arrest data.

But experts at the law enforcement and community level caution that
the matter is far more complicated - also involving factors like
income and gangs - than the divisive political issue it has become in
the community.

The problem of illegal drugs and crime defies a simple explanation,
those experts said.

In its review of drug-related arrests between January 2000 and June
2005, the Press-Gazette found that whites in Brown County were
arrested more than any other racial or ethnic group for drug
violations - primarily for marijuana offenses and those involving
pharmaceuticals and hallucinogens.

Blacks, however, dominated crack cocaine arrests and Hispanic dealers
were the most often arrested in major cocaine cases.

The arrest breakdowns are part of a database from the Brown County
Drug Task Force. The data appear to mirror comments made publicly
last fall by Brown County's former drug czar, Lt. Tom Molitor.

When asked at a public meeting what type of people bring drugs into
the county, Molitor said that, in general, marijuana and cocaine are
brought in by Hispanics and Mexicans, while crack cocaine is brought
in by blacks from Milwaukee and Chicago.

His answer jolted the sensibilities of many fair-minded observers.
And the reaction of some public officials, who appeared to accept his
statements as reason to be suspicious of minorities, led to
expressions of anger and dismay from local civil rights advocates.

But Molitor, who now heads the Green Bay Police Department's
investigative unit, insisted then as he does now that considerations
of race and ethnicity have nothing to do with drug arrests.

"It's not about race," he said of drug investigation. "We go where
the information takes us. We'll buy dope from whoever is selling it."

In a typical drug investigation, police make contact with a drug user
or a low-level dealer, and, under threat of arrest, that suspect will
lead investigators to higher-level suppliers, Molitor said.

Investigators typically try to follow the chain of supply as high as
they are able, he said.

They aren't interested in the suspect's race or ethnicity; they are
only interested in getting the biggest dealers and the biggest
amounts of drugs off the street, he said.

Local, state and federal drug agents work together to cast the widest
net possible for the high-end drug offenders, and they've learned
about the processes of drug trafficking.

What they've learned, Molitor said, is that "Our major sources, along
the I-43 and 41 corridors, are Chicago and Milwaukee, and, to a
lesser extent, Racine and as far out as Rockford.

"You have gangs in the inner cities that control crack . The criminal
gangs are involved in doing that, and, when you can take a quantity
of crack and bring it to Brown County and double your money, that's
the reason they're coming here."

Those are the same sources for drugs in communities like Sheboygan
and Manitowoc, Molitor said.

Gang members from different ethnic and racial groups have differing
abilities to get large amounts of different dangerous drugs, and that
accounts for the general associations of race/ethnicity and the types
of drugs, he said.

By the Numbers

Molitor and current drug unit leader Pat Van Lanen provided the
Press-Gazette with the database of drug arrests that mirror Molitor's comments.

The database shows that arrests for whites for all types of drug
violations between 2000 and June 2005 exceeded that of all the
minority groups combined. Whites also lead the pack for arrests for
charges of delivery and possession with intent to deliver.

That may come as no surprise in a community like Brown County that
still is more than 85 percent white.

And whites in Brown County have almost exclusive claim over the abuse
and sale of a variety of drugs - the pharmaceuticals, hallucinogens
like LSD and mushrooms, Ecstasy and other "club drugs," for example.
Minority groups are represented in just dabbling levels.

But the numbers of arrests for those drugs is puny compared with the
arrests for the "big three" - cocaine, crack cocaine and marijuana.

In those drug cases, whites lead in total arrests but run a close
second to blacks in the number of arrests for delivery and possession
with intent to deliver, the data show.

Whites greatly lead the minority groups in all types of marijuana
arrests, although a relatively small number of Hispanics have been
responsible for a larger amount of marijuana seized during their
arrests, the data show.

"The trend overall in Wisconsin is that white males are the largest
group manufacturing (growing) marijuana," Molitor said. That trend
follows in Brown County, too, he said.

For cocaine, slightly more Hispanics than whites have been arrested
for selling cocaine over the first half of the decade, the data show.
But that minority group was responsible for more than twice the
amount of cocaine seized in those arrests.

"Coke, marijuana, heroin, meth comes across the U.S./Mexican border,"
Molitor said. "You get the Mexican mafia, cartels, organized crime
families controlling the stuff."

And stuff stays "within the family" through most of the wholesale
transactions until it is finally cut and sold in smaller, highly
profitable retail amounts, he said.

"One business owner I know, all the people in his operation are
friends, family and cousins, operating with impunity because nobody
will roll on him," Molitor said.

Crack cocaine - a product of preparing cocaine to make it even more
potent - shows up in the data as being almost exclusively associated
with the black population.

The number of blacks arrested just for delivery exceeds that of all
the racial and ethnic groups arrested for delivery and possession combined.

Molitor believes that's because the production of the drug takes
place in inner-city Milwaukee and Chicago by black gangsters, many of
whom then take the product to places like Brown County because of the
high profit available.

Nonblacks have no connection to those gangs and therefore can't
acquire enough of the drug to become large-scale dealers, Molitor said.

Theories Disputed

Despite the arrest numbers, not everyone is willing to concede that
whites are less involved in major drug violations than various minority groups.

"What immediately strikes me when I look at the numbers, there are
numerous surveys, and what we know from those is that drugs of all
kinds are more frequently used by white teenagers and (white) young
adults," said Ray Hutchison, professor of urban and regional studies
at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

"We're blind to the real story about minority arrests: the use is
higher for whites, arrests are higher for minorities."

True analysis of Molitor's arrest numbers, as provided to the
Press-Gazette, is impossible, because they don't account for one
person being arrested multiple times nor do they indicate where the
suspects resided at the time of the arrest, he said.

Andrew Austin, professor of criminology at UWGB, was even more
dismissive of the database.

"Arrests are really a feature of police behavior," he said. "I don't
think cops are being consciously racist, but it's a product of where
they are patrolling and who they're squeezing.

"A black from out of town is going to be more conspicuous and will be
under greater surveillance. Police are more likely to catch them in
the act than they are whites. Blacks tend to be involved in a very
conspicuous way, out in the open, in the inner-city neighborhoods and
on the street . Police are more likely to focus their attention on
those (areas)."

Molitor agreed with the professors that arrest data by itself isn't a
fair measure. But he took exception to Austin's observations about
the greater conspicuousness of blacks in the Green Bay area making
them a bigger target.

"The main way we get anybody is through informant buys," he said.
"They're coming up on the radar on the demand side of things. They
give us the road map. We go to the consumers of that dope, and
they're the ones telling us who is dealing, who they're buying from.
They know where the dope is, and that's how we get there."

He painted a scenario that he said would be a typical one for
investigators: a man gets arrested for a petty crime such as shoplifting.

During his arrest, the man admits to a crack addiction by saying that
he was never a shoplifter until he got involved in crack use. The man
begins cooperating with investigators, possibly making drug purchases
while wearing surveillance equipment, so that investigators can then
move in on the supplier.

In any case, the numbers may not present a fair picture of the racial
breakdown, Austin said. Nationwide research shows that black drug use
is on par with the proportion of black population, but that black
arrests - the numbers of blacks in prison for drug crimes - far
exceed that of any other racial or ethnic group, he said.

Investigators "may be right in policing the way they do, they may be
wrong," Austin said. "You can't know without independent sources of
information, and you need a big caution when looking at numbers like these."

Defending the Numbers

Richard Harris, who said he served nine years in prison for selling
crack, has no problem at all with attributing crack dealing with
black gang members.

Now executive director of Self Help of Wisconsin, which tries to help
young men stay away from criminal activities, Harris said Molitor's
numbers reflect his experiences; in fact, without even seeing the
numbers, Harris was pretty accurately able to guess the racial and
ethnic proportions they show.

"Your numbers will say that crack is primarily done by
African-Americans," said Harris. "I'd say the Hispanics are probably
doing more dealing in marijuana and some of these other drugs . and
it'll probably say the whites are dealing more in things like speed."

Like Molitor, Harris believes it has a lot to do with access.

"Cocaine used to be the drug of choice for people with money, but by
the 1980s, you could make crack cocaine, and it became inexpensive,
so poor people could have access to it," he said.

"Cocaine is big and bulky, but this is smaller, it's more
transportable, easier to conceal, and the value is higher on the
streets. Black people in these bigger cities like Chicago, Detroit,
D.C. - that's what they traffic in."

Gang members own the drug trade in those places, and they're the
source for it in places like Green Bay, he said.

"Nobody born and raised here in Green Bay is going to be able to
access it," he said. "Nobody would allow them to, because you need
connections, and the connections are the gang members."

Even blacks, without a gang connection, would not likely be able to
buy drugs in large quantities from those inner-city sources, he said.

The risk of getting caught in a place like Green Bay is high, but so
is the profit potential, and that's what brings gang members to
communities like this, he said.

Cocaine mostly comes from South and Central America, and it's only
natural that Hispanics would have greater access to larger amounts of
it, he said.

It also makes sense to Harris that the stuff would stay in the
clutches of Hispanics with connections to organized crime before
eventually being sold in small amounts to white dealers or users and
others, he said.

What doesn't make sense to him is attributing bad behavior to ethnic
and racial groups at large. The problem, he said, is with criminals
in general and gang members in particular.

"Black people of this community don't want to see this stuff either,"
he said. "I don't want to see that guy hanging out in my neighborhood
with a cell phone either, late at night, where there's no buses
running. Why are they out there? What are they doing? That's a
legitimate question to ask."

Making it a racial issue, instead of a crime issue or a poverty
issue, is not just unfair, it's a mistake, Harris said.

"I read in some law enforcement data that gangs are responsible for
40 percent of the crime in cities," he said. "We need to address
that. You don't do it by throwing race in front of it all the time. I
feel we spend a disproportionate amount of time saying 'race' instead
of asking what to do about it.

"Instead of getting in an uproar and saying it's racism, we need to
see how we can change the lives of those people," Harris said.

Harris said he got out of the drug dealing and gang activity because
of volunteers - all whites - who approached him while he was serving
his sentence at Sanger B. Powers Correctional Institution. They were
members of Self Help, the group that Harris later would become
executive director of.

"During my incarceration, they came to me and asked 'What are you
hoping to achieve? What do you think your end is going to be?' I
started thinking, and it was only 'dead or incarcerated for life.' I
decided I needed to get out of it. There were no successful gangsters
or drug dealers."

Whites attributing bad behavior to all minorities instead of to just
the small number of criminals are part of the problem, but
law-abiding minorities are part of the problem, too, if they don't
speak out against the crimes, Harris said.

"They're part of the problem, because they don't work to alleviate
the perceptions," he said. "We need to speak on serious levels and be honest."