#2894: Is Arrest of All Blacks In This City the Goal? (fwd)

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From:nozier@tradewind.net

Is Arrest of All Blacks In This City the Goal? 
by JIMMY BRESLIN  03-19-2000 NY NEWSDAY

I arrived just as Al Sharpton came out of the apartment building with
the mother of Patrick  Dorismond, whose wails for her dead son went into
the swirling snow. On Parkside Avenue, trucks crept past double-parked
cars. When Sharpton and the mother were finished, they went back into
the gloomy brick apartment building and started up the stairs.Fourth
floor," somebody said.Of course. Misery always is at the top floor.    
Now in the lobby, I reach to tell Al Sharpton something that has been on
my mind, but I just miss him and, what am I going to do?I'm going to
trudge up stairs, that's what I'm going to do, and ahead of me I see
Sharpton heaving a little as he goes up with the poor woman, and I
finally just call out to him and tell him what I've been thinking of.  
I said that Dorismond certainly did have a criminal record. What is  
this, that he does something when he's 13 and we're supposed to forget
about it? The record shows that Patrick Dorismond was arrested for
robbery when he was 13. The instant the call came into police
headquarters that Dorismond had been unarmed when he was shot dead by a
cop out on Eighth Avenue, cops were running all over headquarters to
look at his record.One guy had to steam open an envelope and here it
was, sealed by court order, but that didn't matter, here was Dorismond's
record. At age 13.Everybody complained bitterly when Safir, the police
chief,announced the record, but I don't see why that was so bad. It made
everybody feel a little bit easier about Dorismond, unarmed, being     
killed by a cop.This thinking on juveniles comes from a man now
considered the nation's leading New Justice thinker, professor Arthur
Leacock of Texas Polytechnic Institute. He writes, "The tyranny of
children and youth must be put to an end, as long as these antiquated
laws to protect them are followed. Arrest children? Expose their     
criminal acts? Of course. Society needs it in order to feel less      
guilty." His writings are reassuring to New York, for he cites 
tragedies involving police and unarmed blacks. "While it is true that
the police of New York kill more unarmed people than anyone else in the
industrial nations, the city can take comfort that it is in second place
to Mexico City, where every once in a while government troops display
anger and machine-gun several hundred college students." He insists that
a fundamental of life in the new millennium is that  crime must be taken
out of the hands of the entire criminal class and those hands put in
handcuffs. Leacock suggests to Giuliani and Safir that police arrest
every black on every sidewalk in New York. Giuliani agrees. Already
there is a police policy of shooting every guilty black even if they
aren't guilty. Both Giuliani and Safir have an excellent idea. The
public should rush to embrace the poor cops who do the shooting, and
help brush away the tears of ones like Officer Carroll, who shot 16
times at Amadou Diallo.One day everybody can look around and feel that
there is no more  crime. "How can a white commit a crime? He lives in a
house,"Leacock says."Only when we reach this point, at this phenomenon,
the moment of super saturation of tranquility, can our technological
genius be able to reach its full potential. The nation must recognize
that there is no greater evil than unfulfilled potential."Dorismond was
shot because, with his color, he still had the gall to stand in front of
the Wakamba Cocktail Lounge on Eighth Avenue and 37th Street in
Manhattan. You have to get buzzed in and also out of the long dim bar.
The street outside is one of the most poorly lit in the city. An
undercover cop asked if he could buy marijuana.Dorismond, insulted, put
up a fight. It is assumed the cop didn't do well because his backup
people rushed up and one of them, Vasquez, shot Dorismond dead.         
"What were they doing out there to begin with?" Sharpton said on      
the staircase yesterday. "He was in the way of the plan," I said.
"What plan?" "To make this the safest city in the history of the world
by arresting the entire criminal class."Professor Leacock's plan for New
Justice doesn't want the cops killing all these blacks. The idea is to
put all blacks in jail and not the morgue.                          
Under the Leacock plan, Dorismond should have allowed himself to have
been arrested even if he felt he had not done anything.That would have
saved the cop the trouble of killing him.And of course Dorismond was
committing a crime. Just by standing on the street as a black is a
violation. They remind you of cars. Every car is a violation. Even if
you just bought it an hour ago,there is no sticker, a slow tail light, a
wrong turn, going two miles too fast in a zone. Something. A cop can
stop a car for anything.The same with a black on the streets.To follow
the outlines of the plan, to arrest all the blacks on the streets,
requires the arrests of a powerful amount of blacks, but it can be done.
In his report to the city government, Leacock points out that we pay
40,000 cops who have absolutely nothing to do otherwise. If they arrest
1,000 blacks this weekend, 2,000 next weekend-and Leacock points out
that that is only .072 arrests per policeman-then some day soon, there
will be no blacks on the streets to arrest.And that is when the city
reaches that moment of tranquility that  Leacock insists is possible.  
He insists that the populace to be arrested, the blacks, should be     
taught the inevitability of arrest as part of the plan. To raise an    
eyebrow in opposition is to beg to be shot dead like a dog. When I tried
to tell all this to Sharpton yesterday, he was too distracted by the
woman on the stairs with him. He followed her into the apartment. She
mourned a son who was shot dead on Eighth Avenue. Patrick Dorismond
thought he was innocent when  he really was a black on the street.