PERSPECTIVES ON THE ‘TAGGER SHOOTING’ : How to Kill a Latino Kid and Walk Free : The treatment given the killer of an unarmed 18-year-old tagger proves that real affirmative action is for white males.

Eleven months ago, on Jan. 31, Rene Arce, 18 years old and unarmed, was cut down by a bullet in the back. His killer was a 35-year-old part-time actor and National Rifle Assn. member, William Masters, who has said he loves handguns and owns several.

The initial news reports characterized it as a confrontation between a law-abiding citizen and two taggers with a screwdriver. We now know that the presumed law-abiding citizen (who some called a hero) had a run-in with the law in Texas for carrying two swords near a courthouse, that he had been arrested for carrying a pistol into a federal courthouse in Texas. Masters also claimed he was a Marine when in truth the Marines kicked him out after 41 days; he never finished boot camp. Three days after he killed Arce, Masters said that the boy’s mother murdered her son by being an irresponsible, uncaring parent. He also, in a published report, called Arce a “Mexican skinhead.”

William Masters, who was charged only with a weapons violation, was a beneficiary of a type of affirmative action that has been practiced in America for the last 400 years: preferential treatment for white males to the detriment of people of color.

From the very first day that Masters came into contact with the criminal justice system he was coddled, while the family of Arce has been virtually ignored in their grief. Los Angeles homicide detectives, during their questioning of Masters, never once asked him about the first statement he made to the first officer on the scene: Masters said, “I shot him because he was spray painting.” The detectives let Masters ramble on about how he felt threatened and about the shooting stance he used that night, but never closely questioned him about his first statement and other inconsistencies in his story. For instance, midway through the interrogation, Masters described shooting and wounding Arce’s tagger friend, David Hillo, who Masters said had brandished a screwdriver at him. Masters then said, almost to himself, “I didn’t know he had the screwdriver until I went over” (to where Hillo was lying on the ground). The statement is at least ambiguous, but interrogators ignored it.

At times the detectives even seemed to help Masters in his story, asking whether the screwdriver was raised with its point toward Masters, for instance. They were almost collegial with him, interrupting seldom and politely. In contrast, while questioning Hillo, the same two detectives interrupted constantly, pressured him to corroborate Masters’ version and virtually claimed that a witness saw the entire incident, which was untrue. The detectives pressured Hillo hard until, in the end, he gave a version that they wanted to hear. (One answer, however, clarified why he was carrying a screwdriver to begin with: Taggers shove them into the holes in the metal posts that carry parking signs and use them as ladders.)

The second stage of the preferential treatment received by Masters was Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s decision not to file any felony criminal charges against Masters in spite of the fact that Arce was unarmed and shot in the back and in spite of the fact that Hillo was shot, also in the back, while he was perhaps 30 feet away from Masters. The district attorney’s office concluded their investigation of this homicide in just three days, even before receiving the coroner’s final autopsy report, which might have helped determine how close Masters was to Arce when he shot. The district attorney apparently did not bother to interview a former employer of Masters who told police that Masters was “very vindictive” and “despised graffiti” and once showed around a handgun at work.

The last stage of Masters’ preferential treatment came Nov. 8, when Municipal Court Judge Lloyd Nash sentenced Masters to three years of probation and some graffiti removal--but no jail time--on misdemeanor gun charges. The city attorney’s office in Van Nuys had asked that he be jailed for 90 days. Judge Nash’s action echoed that of Judge Joyce Karlin, who in 1991 gave probation to the grocer who shot and killed 14-year-old Latasha Harlins. Like the Karlin sentence, Nash’s action undermined the principle of equal justice.

One does not have to approve of tagging or taggers to agree that vigilantes should not be allowed to shoot these kids with impunity. The Masters case shows what the real day-to-day affirmative action in America is all about: preferential treatment for some at the expense of members of minority groups. This case mocks America’s claim to treat all of its citizens equally.