Crack Prosecutions ‘Fail to Go After the Root Cause’ : PLATFORM

Race has become an issue in federal drug prosecutions: No whites have been convicted of federal crack cocaine offenses in Los Angeles or six surrounding cities since 1986, when Congress enacted stiff penalties for the drug. Federal prosecutors maintain they are focusing on communities whose residents suffer the most from the destructive impact of crack. However, many South-Central Los Angeles residents and other people familiar with the issue who talked with JOHN MITCHELL perceive a a discriminatory aspect to the federal approach. *

KAREN BASS

Director, Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention, South-Central

It seems with all these arrests that the root causes of why people are dealing and using drugs are being ignored. Inner-city communities, minority communities, need more economic expansion. Locking people up for what amounts to a lifetime is not the answer.

But to go after funding, the measure of success for law enforcement is determined by how many people you lock up. They focus on inner-city areas because the arrests are easier to make there.

What about the money launderers, the banks dealing with the drug trade? They skip them and go after the easy [low-level] arrests. People caught with crack face a double standard [of longer sentences] than those caught with powder cocaine. But people who buy powder cocaine often just change it into rock.

The quality of life in inner-city communities doesn’t improve, because they have failed to go after the root causes of the problem. The addicts and dealers arrested on the street corners are quickly replaced by new addicts and new dealers and the quality of life hasn’t changed.

Locking people up and building more prisons may get politicians elected but it is a short-sighted solution.

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JAMES SIMMONS

Attorney with Legal Aid Foundation’s South-Central office and a former U.S. public defender

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When the crack cases started showing up in federal court [in the late 1980s], they were schoolyard cases. All we saw were blacks and Latinos getting five-, 10-, 20-year sentences--even life--for what in the scheme of things were insignificant amounts of crack.

They were the street dealers, not the drug kingpins who supposedly the law was designed for. The federal prosecutors would say they were protecting the black community by putting these people away, but the problem is, the laws were racist. There have been plenty of prosecutions of whites on the state level, but when it came to harsh [federal] sentencing, that was reserved for blacks and browns.

It has nothing to do with protecting the community. All it has done is put a burden on the prison system and on taxpayers. It’s like the Vietnam war; they are trying to impose a military solution on something that needs more, much more. There needs to be more education and employment opportunities.

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ESTELLE VAN METER

Longtime South-Central resident, activist on senior issues

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I know one thing: I want to live in a clean, nice, wholesome community. Anyone who stands for what they know is right should be working against drugs. That includes the police, the churches, the schools, everybody in the community.

There should be more police to stop crime, but also more opportunities for young people to do wholesome things with their lives.

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ARTHUR PABLO CHAVEZ

Former addict, South-Central

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For six years, I’ve been clean. Arrests haven’t changed things on the street. I’ve seen situations where crack is being dealt right around the corner from police stations. Police are about arresting people, that’s what they do.

Drugs are a tool to keep people in line. And jail is another form of subjugation.

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INGRID MENDEZ

16, sophomore at Dorsey High School’s Law and Public Service Magnet

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If you are into selling drugs, then you are obviously looking to gain a bad reputation. You are asking for trouble not just for yourself but your ethnic group. Drugs drag down your community.

Drugs are a big problem everywhere, not just in certain areas. It shouldn’t just be a racial thing. Police should focus everywhere because when they focus just on one place, the dealers move someplace else.

Sometimes, I know, people have needs and selling drugs is the only way the think they can succeed. But if you want to succeed in something you have to try hard, not just take the easy way out. That’s true no matter where you come from.

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JOSEPH GARDNER

President of the Baldwin Hills Estates Homeowners Assn.

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It’s reprehensible that the police concentrate on minority communities.

Drugs are citywide, worldwide. Law enforcement needs to concentrate on the source, on the proliferation of supply. That’s not in minority communities. Let’s dry up the source and then we don’t have to worry about the small-time pushers out here on the street.

The problem is that minority communities have been stereotyped by the media as users of these drugs. They never take you to white communities. That is why the prevalent attitude is that minority communities are the biggest users of drugs and easier targets for arrest.