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| Summer 2002 |
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Cops, Cars, and Criminality To the editor: Besides the New Jersey Turnpike study Mac Donald cites, another resource is available to compare a given community’s minority population with its percentage of minority criminal suspects: the 911/Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system. With every 911 call, the citizen advises of the suspect’s race, sex, and approximate age. Citizens, who want crimes against their persons and property solved, describe their assailants as accurately as possible, without racial motivations. These reports are stored in the CAD systems for up to four years. A CAD audit would show why officers make contact with suspects of a certain race, sex, and age: that’s whom they are told to contact by the citizens they serve. Ron Bryant To the editor: Don’t laugh—-that’s how the game is played these days. Andy Freeman To the editor: Kenneth Walkling To the editor: My girlfriend’s brother lives at the corner of Bellevue and Cochran, and seeing his truck in the driveway, I stopped to see him. He wasn’t home, so I left a note, got back into my car, and proceeded to work. As I pulled up to the corner, I noticed the deputy heading south back down Bellevue. I turned right onto Cochran, heading north. Within minutes, he was in my rearview mirror. At a stop sign, I came to a complete stop, used my turn signal, and turned right. After running the stop sign, the officer hit his lights and pulled me over. When the officer got to the window, I handed him my license, registration, and proof of insurance. I asked him why he stopped me. He didn’t answer. He then asked me a series of questions: “Who lives at the residence where you stopped?” My girlfriend’s brother. “Who was that man you were following?” I don’t know who he was, we were just going in the same direction. “Where are you going?” To work. “Where do you work?” On the other side of Olivet. “What do you do out there?” I work for a framer. We just started framing a house. “Where are you coming from?” Mason. I just took an entrance exam for the carpenters’ school. “Why are you out here if you’re working on the other side of Olivet?” It’s the most direct route from Mason to Olivet. He told me to hold on and he would be right back. A few minutes later he asked about an updated proof of insurance. I looked and later found it. He had told me not to worry about it, and asked, “Does the car have insurance?” I said yes, and that I just put the new slip in the car. “Who owns the vehicle?” My girlfriend’s dad or brother—I couldn’t remember which. After sitting there for 45 minutes, his backup arrived. He placed me under arrest and took me to jail. I was later released on a $200 bond. I was not issued any ticket other than Driving with License Suspended. I was driving on a public road. I stopped at a residence that I have every right to visit. I did nothing wrong to warrant being pulled over—I wasn’t speeding or driving erratically. I was stopped unjustly, because I was an African American. This is Jim Crow revisited. The officer’s probable cause went out the window when he passed me. He had already ruled me out as a threat, and so I no longer had reason to elude him. I simply made a stop at a friend’s house, and because he was not home, that meant I was doing something wrong or acting suspiciously. (I was later told that the deputy asked the owner of the house on Cochran if he knew a “black guy.” He answered, “Yes, that’s my sister’s boyfriend.” The deputy replied “Oh, then he wasn’t lying.”) As an individual who has friends of many different races and nationalities, I am really disturbed by this situation. I pride myself on the way my family raised me—to accept each individual as an individual. For years, I have led myself to believe that race relations were getting better in the world. What a fool I was. As an African-American man, I am looked at harder by police, and driving a car almost instantly gives them probable cause to stop and search me. That deputy violated my civil rights, demeaned my character, and has done serious damage to my dignity. You cannot put a price on an individual’s dignity. The county is just as liable in this case as the sheriff’s department, and I plan to hold them as such. I feel this is a small price to pay for violating a person’s civil rights. Luther W. Brown, Jr. Heather Mac Donald responds: Since Mr. Brown has initiated legal proceedings against Eaton County and its sheriff’s department, the department is not discussing the case. According to its spokesman, “there is certainly another side to the story.” Here are some of the questions the fact finder will want to ask: Was there a string of crimes going on in the area that would have led the police to be extra vigilant? Did Mr. Brown or the car fit any known descriptions of suspects? The officer ran both plates—not just that of the black driver; what did he find out about either car? (Would anything have suggested that Mr. Brown was not the car’s owner—such as the owner’s age or presumed ethnicity?) Mr. Brown had a suspended license (though he was driving anyway): Why was his license suspended—is he an erratic driver, whose behavior may have attracted the deputy’s attention? What did he do when he approached the house—did he possibly try the door or look in the windows? What was his demeanor when he was stopped? All these questions may be answered in Mr. Brown’s favor. Without doubt, there are officers among the country’s nearly 650,000 local law-enforcement personnel who use race in a lazy and biased manner to single out law-abiders for unjustified stops. I do not believe that such behavior is the norm. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Brown encountered one of those officers. Politically Prepped To the editor: I should have known better. Andover does not promote sexual activity on the part of its students. The quote regarding Saran Wrap came from a question raised by a student during a presentation by a city or county health officer. Sex between students is not encouraged or considered acceptable. In fact, one school administrator indicated that such activity is strongly discouraged for both physical and emotional reasons. My conclusion is that Heather Mac Donald is a tabloid journalist. Some people will do or say anything to make a buck. I would love for Mac Donald to debate an Andover administrator in front of the students. She could point out where her article is truthful and Andover would have a chance to defend itself. Nah, that will never happen! Edward H. Parker, Jr. To the editor: Your piece caused quite a stir: apparently, a current parent and alumnus forwarded your article (anonymously) to several administrators. At a recent all-school meeting, Barbara Chase, our head of school, addressed the article, saying it “appeals to people’s prejudices in the worst sort of way.” I am sure that you have received much criticism, and I wanted to write to you to say that I am pleased that someone outside our community uncovered the grave problems created here by the PC plague. Anonymous P.S.: Sorry to remain anonymous, but it’s that bad. To the editor: Will Scharf To the editor: R. Sam Cecil To the editor: Dean Clark Heather Mac Donald responds: Mr. Parker does not uncover any inaccuracies in my story. Since he intimates that Andover has exonerated itself from the charge of political correctness run amok, I assume he agrees with the administration that Andover’s students—girls and boys alike—are so sexist that they need gender quotas in student government forced upon them. I fail to see how arguing that today’s students are ready for a gender- and colorblind education “appeals to people’s prejudices.” A Taxiing Problem To the editor: Malanga proposes that the city buy back the medallions and charge a license fee to taxi operators. This only perpetuates the artificial scarcity problem and the cost it imposes on taxi riders. This socialist solution—the “nationalization” of the medallion industry (as distinct from the taxi industry)—is rife with problems, not the least of which is that the city will be forced by its fiscal imperatives, exacerbated by Malanga’s bond offering, to act as any monopolist would—by restricting supply to extract the maximum economic rent (in this case, total license-fee revenues) from its position. The article is replete with fuzzy math and dubious law. Malanga says the buyback will cost “hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps more than $1 billion,” assuming that the city could buy each medallion from its owner at its original cost. This is a gross violation of due process: when the government takes property, it must pay fair value and treat owners of equal property equally; the original purchase price is irrelevant. The fellow who had the foresight to buy a medallion for $35,000 and the one who paid top dollar at $275,000 must get the same current fair market value—and that total is $2.4 billion. The “licensing fee” number—even in the broad $5,000 to $10,000 range Malanga allows—is highly suspect. He confuses the licensing fee that covers the medallion only with a leasing fee of $30,000, which would include the cost of buying, operating, and insuring the taxi vehicle itself. The licensing fee is really a payment to the city for the artificial taxi scarcity it creates. Whatever that fee might be with 12,000 taxis, it must be radically lower if 25,000 cabs are to operate profitably. The notion that taxi economics will not be affected by an increase in supply from 12,000 to 25,000 will get a flunking grade in Econ 101. Here is a better idea: the city sells medallions to all comers at $200,000 each this year, and at the average of the prior year’s free-market prices in subsequent years. (Note that this can’t possibly be higher than $200,000, because the city is providing an unlimited supply at that price; note also that future sales at lower prices occur only if the free market moves in that direction.) Taxi medallions cannot go up in value any more, and there can be no element of speculative upside in their pricing. The price will simply reflect their current scarcity value. That should decline over time as more and more medallions are sold and in the long run we get closer to a free market in taxi services. In the short run, the city reaps the medallion sales revenues; in the long run, the taxi rider gets the benefits of greater availability of service, lower fares, and nicer cars. Robert Rosenkranz To the editor: Rifkind recommended that the city issue a second medallion to holders of existing medallions, thus doubling the number of licensed cabs, reducing the value of those already possessed, and increasing the supply of taxicabs, but without destroying the investment of people who paid for existing medallions—sort of like a stock split. This suggestion was never pursued, but isn’t it a fairer way of dealing with existing medallion holders? Edward N. Costikyan Steven Malanga responds: Mr. Rosenkranz would prefer the city never to stop issuing medallions, and he seems to assume that an unregulated taxi market will reach equilibrium and regulate itself. Though my free-market instincts would love to agree, cities where open entry has been tried have suffered from paralyzing congestion in central business districts and around airports—too many competitors all rushing to where the action is. [See “New York’s Unsung Taxi Triumph,” Autumn 1999]. The market’s invisible hand can’t guarantee that you’ll make your flight or your crosstown meeting. Where Mr. Rosenkranz’s proposal would likely lead to too many drivers crowding into already congested streets, Judge Rifkind’s suggestion does nothing to solve the current problem Gotham faces: a shortage of drivers, caused by the high licensing fees that medallion owners charge. My solution gives the license to the taxi operator and so is more likely to attract sufficient drivers. Who Is Being Ethnocentric? To the editor: Stacey Choi To the editor: My mother is Mexican. I grew up in Gary, Indiana, in the 1960s, and its Mexican-American population maintained ethnic pride—just as the Germans and Poles did—but were unflinchingly American. California’s proximity to Mexico does pose a special problem—the cultural umbilicus is still connected. Thanks for a hard-hitting and truthful article. Major Mark Tims To the editor: Antonio Mantranga Soft Bigotry To the editor: Michael Fleming
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