Op-Alt:
Why exercising your rights is still a dangerous act a year after the death of
Freddie Gray
Peaceful
protesters are arrested after curfew in front of Central Booking during last
year's Uprising. (J.M. Giordano/City Paper)
David Walsh-Little
Tionne Jones
resides in the Greenmount West neighborhood on the east
side of Baltimore. Last month, he took a simple yet dangerous step for a young
African-American man. He told a police officer that he could not search his
home without a warrant signed by a judge. Absent some emergency, what Jones
told the officers is exactly correct under the United States Constitution and
Maryland Declaration of Rights. Yet, in practice, when poor African-American
residents invoke these protections in encounters with the police, the words of
remote legal documents are no match for police authority on the street. For
Jones, his choice to assert his rights meant his body was grabbed, dragged down
his front steps, thrown on the cement sidewalk, and his arms were handcuffed behind
his back.
We know the story of Tionne Jones because of the
relatively recent practice of recording police conduct with cell phones and
uploading them to the Internet. Video captures Jones standing in the archway of
his front door when a police officer approaches and demands to talk to the
property owner. Jones tells the police officer that that the police need a
warrant for entry into the home. Another officer then arrives, walks directly
up the front steps toward Jones says, "This is my house." The officer
responds, "It doesn't matter," at which point the officer grabs
Jones, drags him to the sidewalk, throws him violently to the ground, and
handcuffs him. The police then tell the other individuals present to go inside
the house and a voice over the recording states, "this is why I don't like
the police at all."
Jones was initially charged with disorderly
conduct, a misdemeanor criminal offense. All charges were later dropped by the
Office of the States Attorney. Unfortunately, these incidents are not new or
infrequent. The Maryland Office of the Public Defender regularly holds
community workshops to teach members of the public about their constitutional
rights and how to exercise them. When Jones answered the front door, he
followed the advice we regularly give the public, to ask the police to display
a warrant before allowing them into a home. Yet as the video of the incident
between Mr. Jones and the police aptly captures, Baltimore residents are forced
to choose between their constitutional rights and the risk of being falsely
arrested and charged. For Tionne Jones, and too many others, this predicament
is a way of life in poor neighborhoods: comply with requests by the police even
when unsupported by the law, or risk a pat down, an illegal arrest, or far
worse.
It has been a little over a year since Freddie
Gray's death. International attention was focused on Baltimore during Gray's
funeral, and the aftermath of protests, curfews, looting, and criminal charges
that defined our city in the spring of 2015. The Maryland Office of the Public
Defender represented many people who were arrested, held, and never charged
with a crime during this turbulent time. This Baltimore experience has shaped
the complex identity of our city and its role in a national movement that has
shed light on unfair police practices, as well as the broader impact of
criminal justice on the urban poor. Despite attention drawn by this moment in
the spotlight, little has changed for those who are most vulnerable to violence
by the police—the urban poor.
This issue involves policing practices and their
relationship to the communities they seek to protect. The police, though, are
just one aspect of a broader criminal justice system that disparately treats
people from poor neighborhoods. When police act inappropriately in criminal
cases, courts are tasked with reviewing police conduct for constitutional
violations and suppressing evidence when appropriate. Too often, judges are not
willing to make such rulings, afraid to be seen as "soft on crime,"
which inevitably empowers the police to continue the unlawful behavior as it is
implicitly sanctioned by the courts. Civil suits against the police can be
cumbersome and costly, making it difficult to find attorneys to take such
cases, and may provide only limited redress for those who are victims of false
arrests.
Where are we a year or so after Freddie Gray's
death here in Baltimore? Tionne Jones' experience seems to speak for itself.
When African-American men are still being falsely arrested for exercising their
constitutional rights, it is hard to say we have made much progress. United
States Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo wrote "law never is but
is always about to be." Law is a process that can be something else, and
should be something else, but it has to have meaning for the Freddie Grays and
the Tionne Jones of the world. Until all people can exercise their
constitutional rights without retribution, the law acts as an unfair tool to
keep some communities down. It is time we progress toward something better, a
simple goal that our constitution demands.
David Walsh-Little is the Chief
Attorney of the Felony Trial Division of the Office of the Public Defender in
Baltimore.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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