U.S. Defends Handling of Crack Cases : Drugs: Prosecutors deny targeting minorities. But activists demand to know why no whites have been convicted.

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles defended their handling of crack cocaine cases in a 500-page court filing released Thursday, while leaders in the black community pressed the U.S. attorney’s office to explain why the federal war on crack here has exclusively targeted minority neighborhoods.

Hundreds of blacks and Latinos in Southern California have been locked up for five- and 10-year mandatory federal prison terms, records show. Virtually all whites arrested for crack offenses have been prosecuted in state court, where the penalties are less severe.

Not a single white has been convicted federally of a crack offense in Los Angeles or six other Southland counties since 1986, when Congress enacted stiff new penalties to quell an epidemic of the drug, The Times reported Sunday. One white was indicted in February and is now awaiting trial.

“We want to see about those numbers and why they are that way. They raise more questions than they answer,” said Kerman Maddox, chairman of the political outreach committee at the Rev. Cecil Murray’s First AME Church in Los Angeles.

Maddox said he has requested that U.S. Atty. Nora M. Manella meet with a group of prominent African American leaders to discuss federal crack prosecutions. The statistics, he added, indicate that federal policies “might not be colorblind.”

While U.S. Justice Department officials declined to comment, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) sent a letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno on Thursday asking for an explanation of why 96% to 97% of federal crack defendants nationwide are minorities.

“We need a justice system where all Americans can be treated equally before the law,” Waters wrote. “We have a long way to go to reach that ideal, if this disparity in crack cocaine prosecutions is any indication.”

Federal prosecutors have steadfastly denied that race has anything to do with whom they investigate and charge. Manella has said that federal law enforcement, with its limited resources, must focus on dealers in minority communities, where the crack trade has been the most violent and destructive to neighborhoods.

The dearth of whites, however, has elicited numerous court challenges from defense attorneys who have accused the federal government of unfairly targeting minorities, particularly blacks.

In response to allegations raised in a pending crack case, federal prosecutors filed lengthy pleadings in court late Wednesday night. They included a statistical analysis of federal crack prosecutions during the last three years as well as 10 declarations by federal agents, researchers, prosecutors and local police.

In their pleadings, federal authorities said that under their “race-neutral” guidelines, they target gang members, repeat offenders and large-quantity dealers--those selling two ounces or more. They said they focus on neighborhoods with high crime rates, violence and street gang activity.

“At no time is race or ethnicity ever a factor in any decision by the FBI or the Los Angeles Metropolitan Task Force on Violent Crime regarding whether to seek charges against a subject,” said Ronald L. Iden, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office.

After undertaking “a painstaking” review of all crack cases filed from January, 1992, to March, 1995, the U.S. attorney’s office concluded that race was never a factor in the decisions to prosecute. The exhaustive search found one indictment of a white out of 144 crack defendants. A previous study by defense attorneys revealed that no whites were indicted on federal charges for crack offenses from 1988 to 1992.

“That there has been only one federal white cocaine base [crack] defendant is not itself an indication of racial discrimination,” stated Assistant U.S. Atty. Steven G. Madison, who helped write the lengthy brief.

To bolster their position, prosecutors cited an analysis by Peter Reuter, an economist at the University of Maryland who specializes in drug policy. Reuter concluded that frequent crack use and its resulting problems are far more concentrated in poor, inner city areas, which accounts for the overwhelming number of crack defendants who are black or Latino.

“It is the poorer sections of large cities, with high percentages of young African American males, that the problems of disorder and violence surrounding drug distribution are most acute,” Reuter said. “Those are the communities that have the greatest need for active drug enforcement.”

Although crack use is more concentrated in minority communities, studies and surveys have shown that far more whites use crack cocaine than members of any other racial group. A high percentage of those who use crack are believed to also sell it.

Law enforcement data shows that hundreds of white crack traffickers have been arrested and prosecuted in state courts in Southern California in the last five years.

Federal authorities say whites do not sell large enough amounts of crack to qualify for federal prosecution. But defense attorneys counter that white traffickers are not subjected to repeated undercover buys--a common tactic used by federal undercover agents against minority dealers.

While acknowledging that crack is a major problem in the inner city, minority leaders have questioned the pattern of federal prosecutions.

“It’s obvious there is some real racial skewing going on. We may need some equity in the system,” said Kevin Reed, an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

“Certainly, the drug is more accessible in the black community and arrests are easier to make,” the Rev. Murray said. “In larger white society, it is more difficult for police to get at the problem. But I think they need to do more on both fronts--in the ghetto and in white areas.”

Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden, who represents central Los Angeles, said he does not want law enforcement to back off from investigating dealers in his community. “I get plenty of complaints from my constituents about crack problems,” he said. But Holden added that “selective prosecution is not acceptable. If that is the case with crack, then it is not fair.”