Discovering a Crackdown of a Different Color

Maybe I’m getting old, but I found myself at first concurring with Antonin Scalia, a most conservative member of a most conservative Supreme Court. I warmed up to the tough-minded jurist recently when he went on a bit of a rant about a loitering law aimed at gang members in Chicago.

I thought he showed some horse sense in sticking up for the anti-gang measure, which to his great dismay, was struck down by a 6-3 majority. It was declared unconstitutional because it was too vague and gave police too much discretion to single out and arrest innocent people.

Chicago’s 1992 loitering law made it a crime for people, already told to disperse, to “remain in any one place with no apparent purpose” while in the presence of a suspected gang member.

Scalia sarcastically accused his colleagues of defending a “Fundamental Freedom to Loiter” in America. If he lived in a gang-infested area, the dissenting justice retorted, “I would trade my right to loiter in the vicinity of a gang member in return for the liberation of my neighborhood in an instant.”

You don’t need a law degree to understand what Scalia meant. All you need is to live in a nice suburb, like I do, and feel the fear come creeping in with the menacing signs of gang presence.

It happened in my beach community in the early 1990s when a turf war shattered our seaside peace. There were shots fired at cars cruising past enemy hangouts. There was a man stabbed to death on a street in my little town.

In August 1993, police raided 15 homes, netting 11 suspects and 29 firearms. Two months later, my son turned 12. What a father needs most, on the eve of his child’s adolescence, is a good gang sweep through his neighborhood. It doesn’t matter if you get the bad guys for gun-running or gum-chewing, the parental instinct says. Just get ‘em off the streets and away from my boy.

The success of the crackdown was even hailed by Bob Dole during the presidential campaign of 1996. The Republican candidate stood in a city park four blocks from my two-bedroom townhome and saluted police and community activists for cleaning up the place where my son and I used to take our dog, Chispa, and practice baseball.

“This is the spirit I want to see across America!” exclaimed Dole.

Less than two months later, my son, who had turned 14 and shaved his head, was stopped and interrogated by police in that very same park.

Suddenly, my fatherly instincts made me see the gang problem in an entirely different light. And now, thinking back on my maddening discussions with police to find out what had happened, I remember why I don’t usually agree with Antonin Scalia.

A cop had spotted my son skateboarding illegally and called him over, along with two of his old buddies, both blond boys from a more affluent neighboring city. But instead of giving him a citation, which would have been fair enough, the officer filled out a field interview card, asking his name, address and any identifying marks or tattoos.

That’s legal, believe it or not. But he grilled only my dark-skinned son, not his friends who stood there next to him, skateboards in hand. Then, police put my son’s information into a secret police database used to keep track of potential troublemakers and for future leads in investigations. The other boys were not even asked to give their names.

When I complained to the brass, they said their database did indeed indicate my son was with two other boys that day--both with Latino last names. The shock even made me doubt my boy’s story.

But he was telling the truth. Later, the cops confessed they had made a mistake in data entry. The two other Latino boys had been stopped later that day by the same officer.

That’s no innocuous error. If I had not complained so vigorously, cops would have been at my door asking to talk to my son the minute those two strangers committed some future atrocity. Sorry, police said. They promised to “bifurcate” the names, but refused to delete my son from the computer unless I sued them.

Sure, squander his college fund on legal fees. My son graduated from high school this month. For all I know, his name is still registered in that undemocratic and discriminatory database.

To this day, I’m sure he was singled out by police under pressure to clean up Chicano gangs in that once-again peaceful park. Their unstated tactic: Keep tabs on anybody who looks the part.

So on second thought, I’m going with the majority in the Chicago case. Like me with my son, the justices worried that police could target people who weren’t doing anything wrong.

It’s easy to side with Scalia out of fear. It’s harder to protect the innocent while pursuing the guilty.

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesdays. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or online at agustin.gurza@latimes.com.