On Tap

In Boston and Washington, D.C. police will soon be going door-to-door, asking to search homes for illegally possessed firearms or drugs. Those found in illegal possession of a firearm (or drugs) will not be charged unless the gun was found to be used in a crime.

I’ve been covering this ill-conceived idea for months now on the show, and I’m heartened to see the efforts get some well-deserved criticism. But where is the criticism coming from? Marion Barry, the ACLU, and the New Black Panther Party. Where are the conservative objections? Hell, where’s Reason?

So let’s look at the criticism. Marion Barry, the former D.C. mayor (and crack smoker) says:

the plan violates the Fourth Amendment, which bars illegal search and seizure. He also said it infringes on parental responsibility.

“If there’s a parent who has a son who has a gun in the home and they know what to do, [then] they can call the police,” said Mr. Barry, Ward 8 Democrat. “It’s not that hard.”

Oh. My. God. Marion Barry actually sounds reasonable. As opposed to Jamarhl Crawford, chairman of the New Black Panther Party in Roxbury, Massachusetts.

“Police are like vampires. They shouldn’t be invited into your homes.” “Vampires are polite; they’re smooth,” he said in an interview the following day. “But once they get in, the door closes. Havoc ensues.”

Lisa Thurau-Gray, managing director of the Juvenile Justice Center at Suffolk University Law School, isn’t much better.

She likened the police persistence to a sexual aggressor who refuses to stop assaulting a victim despite her pleas. “What part of no don’t they understand?” she said.

When Marion Barry is the only person talking about individual responsibility, we’re in trouble. Not being an attorney, I’ll let the con law professors debate the legality of the voluntary searches. But Barry’s right about the message this sends to parents. This program once again tells us that we have no responsibility. Not as parents, not as juveniles, and frankly, not as elected officials.

The parents are told they don’t have to parent. Just call the police and let them take the gun (or drugs) away. Of course the police will leave behind a pissed-off juvenile who will almost certainly go out and get more drugs or another gun through equally illegal means, but the police chief and the politicians have already told them they won’t be punished for their crimes. And the politicians and chiefs avoid responsibility for the aftermath of this program with their excuse of “We’re genuinely trying to save lives.”

This effort may end up leading to more violent crime. If it’s already leading to police being referred to as “vampires”, you’d have to think it’s not a great boon to establishing rapport between the beat cops and the people who live in these high-crime communities. It seems designed mostly to get positive press coverage rather than achieving any real benefit.

The politicians in D.C. have become so used to taking away liberty in the name of the common good that it’s fair to say they really don’t see anything wrong with this. And that’s the scariest part of all.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at March 25, 2008 - 4:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.