June 25, 1999
By Raoul Lowery Contreras
Standing on a corner waiting for a ride to a ball game is not a crime anywhere in the country. But, it was in Chicago if a cop didn't like your looks, or thought you were a gang member, or you were guilty of being Black-On -A Sunday-Afternoon. In fact, the City of Chicago passed a law in 1992 that defined loitering as "remaining in any one place with no apparent purpose."
45,000 mostly Black and Hispanic young men were arrested under this law. The United States Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutionally broad this week. Watching the case were 31 states, cities and counties that had or wished they had similar laws. Even the Clinton Administration filed a brief in support of the law.
Justice John Stevens wrote the opinion for the 6-3 majority. He wrote that the law was too broad and implied that street cops could just arrest anyone they wanted to if they were just standing around.
Will this ruling prohibit other tighter loitering laws stand, probably. Thus, the war on gangs can continue as it has in California with specific laws so far being upheld by the courts. California laws use zones and places as the base to outlaw congregations of known criminals and felons. Another tactic used in some cities against street prostitutes has also worked on gang people.
The tactics used against prostitutes is composed of a group, such as a neighborhood business or community group, to identify individuals and to serve them with restraining orders ordering them to stay away from that particular place. If they return, the police simply arrest them for violating the restraining order. World famous prostitute hangouts have been cleaned out by this method in some cities. Won't the "hooker" solution work for gang members, also?
If the reader notices, specificity is the key to legality. Allowing police to arrest people for just standing around amounts to, as Justice Stevens wrote, conversion of "a substantial amount of innocent conduct" into crimes with a six-month jail term and a $500.00 fine attached.
Disagreeing with Stevens and the majority were the three most conservative justices, William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. In his dissenting opinion, which he read out loud from the bench, Scalia made some astounding statements. He called the decision a "regrettable incursion on the people's right to govern themselves."
Further, Scalia said, "I would gladly trade my ability to hang out with a gang member in exchange for the liberation of my neighborhood in an instant." Scalia is funny. Would he have said the same thing about white men standing around on Southern corners, drinking beer, getting up enough courage to go kill someone for the crime of being Black? I don't think so. Scalia just refuses to accept that constitutional rights are for everyone, not just "white guys."
Another aspect of this situation that escapes this writer is that we have the perfect example of New York and how they've knocked crime rates down, why can't Chicago emulate New York? In New York, Mayor Giuliani ordered the cops to man every corner where bad people congregated. Crime activity dropped immediately. And, though many of the criminals in New York are Hispanic or black, the crackdown was on criminal activity, not race.
In Chicago, with its long history of rotten race relations, the police need to have the right tools, not shoddy ordinances written by 50 or so political hacks known as aldermen.
What is the right law? Justice Stevens pointed in the right direction with defining "loitering" better, suggesting that it might be lingering in one spot "with no apparent purpose other than to establish control over identifiable areas, to intimidate others from entering those areas, or to conceal illegal activities." This could be done by cops simply standing on the same corner with bad guys. Eventually, as in New York, the cops will wear out the bad guys and everyone will benefit, except the bad guys.
Specificity, then, is the key. Not Justice Scalia's rant that, among other things, stated that "unless a constitutional right like freedom of speech or religion is involved, it is up to the citizens to decide for themselves whether they are willing to exchange some personal liberty for community safety.
Justice Scalia is willing to sacrifice constitutional rights to lock up people for no reason, on the hope that the community might be safer. I am not. We can't pick and choose what constitutional rights we can "sacrifice" in an effort to govern ourselves. We have a police force we contract with, if they'll do their job, no one needs to sacrifice any rights.
Who was it that said, if you sacrifice some liberty for some safety, you'll wind up losing both, who?
Raoul Lowery Contreras can be e-mailed at: www.raoul.net
Return to Frontpage