In a rare moment of levity during this week’s tense D.C. Council session on crime legislation, Chairman Vincent Gray peered down the dais and called on Muriel Bowser, an African-American council member. Bowser looked perplexed. Mary Cheh, the white council member from Ward 3, piped up.
“Actually,” she said, “I asked to speak.”
“Sorry,” Gray said. “I don’t want to be accused of racial profiling.”
The 13 council members relaxed, but only for a second; accusations of “racial profiling” ruled the debate and triggered some nasty exchanges that were reminiscent of the days when Marion Barry played the race card to get elected and stay elected.
Speaking of Barry, he joined the debate to mumble the same inane ideas that brought D.C. to its knees back when he was mayor — when crack gangs ruled the streets and the murder rate flirted with 500 a year. Barry said he had been “naive.” What was needed was more treatment.
Then the former “mayor for life” rested his head on his chair and dozed off.
The debate over the crime bill exposed the council’s gutless and witless majority. Sadly, Barry still leads this wing. He and Harry Thomas Jr. (Ward 5) and Yvette Alexander (Ward 7) and at-large member Michael Brown kept saying the crime bill lacked any funds for programs to help the jobless and support ex-cons. I wanted to scream: “This is about helping cops and prosecutors, not funding social workers.”
Before the debate on the emergency crime bill, I asked Thomas about the bill’s most important provision. It would allow lawmen to use civil gang injunctions to control the crews and gangs that are making some neighborhoods unbearable. The law clearly states police could not employ arbitrary sweeps. Police and prosecutors would have to present strong evidence that a gang existed; even then the members could only be barred from some activities — but not arrested.
When I asked Thomas if he would support the injunction, he turned around to a group of young folks wearing white shirts. “See these kids,” he asked. “They could be the white-shirt gang, and cops could arrest them.”
Later from the dais, Thomas said kids coming home from a basketball game could be arrested for wearing the same jersey. Cheh and Alexander agreed. At-large member Kwame Brown talked about the evils of racial profiling.
Facts are the Metropolitan Police Department has a stellar record when it comes to making arrests based on race. The Lamberth Consulting Group assessed profiling in police departments across the country in 2005. The Justice Department helped pay. “The results of this study with respect to traffic are excellent and about as good as can be expected,” it said. “They provide no evidence of targeting of either blacks or Hispanics in Washington, D.C., by the MPD.”
The horrible irony is that by playing the race card, black council members are making life miserable for black residents.
E-mail Harry Jaffe [email protected].
