Secret Reason for Trinidad Checkpoint?
Residents watch the police checkpoint in D.C.'s Trinidad neighborhood on Saturday, June 7, 2008. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) |
We balked at the initial news that the Metropolitan Police Department planned to throw up barriers and checkpoints in certain D.C. neighborhoods experiencing excessive violent crime. Later, when we learned the details of the first case, the week-long checkpoint that was established in Trinidad, the MPD's plan appeared to be both constitutionally dubious and potentially not very effective. So it's with great interest that we read today's Washington Post editorial lambasting critics of the checkpoints for getting more upset about murky constitutional issues than about high rates of violent crime and murder.
There's a dispute over whether the operation violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. There is some merit to the claim that police were using the checkpoints for general law enforcement, which could render them unconstitutional. But city attorneys make a convincing argument that because the program's goal was the physical safety of roadways, it passes constitutional muster. Indeed, they liken the Trinidad stops to sobriety checkpoints, which have been upheld by the Supreme Court.Most of us who felt that the checkpoints bore a far too close resemblance to police state tactics would argue in return that all of us want an increased police presence in Trinidad that could ensure the physical safety of the neighborhood's roadways -- just not at the expense of hassling and turning away District residents without probable cause. Well via City Desk, it turns out Chief Cathy Lanier says she actually had a specific reason for putting up the Trinidad checkpoint. D.C. Watch has the recap of her testimony at a D.C. Council hearing on the matter.
Chief Lanier announced for the first time that the stated reasons for instituting a blockade of the Trinidad neighborhood were not the true reasons, or at least not the major reason, behind the cordon. There was another, more important, reason, she told the committee, but she could not reveal what that reason was. If the committee members knew what she knew, she was confident that they would agree with her actions, but she couldn’t tell them what she knew. She had, she said, specific information that there were specific individuals who were going to enter that neighborhood to commit a particular crime. Preventing that crime was the real reason for quarantining Trinidad. No lesser measures — tracking those specific individuals, warning the intended victims of the crime, etc. — would have sufficed to prevent the crime. Only a full-scale lock down of the neighborhood and lockout of other citizens was enough. But councilmembers would have to take her word for it, because she couldn’t tell them anything more.Of course, that's not at all the reasoning Lanier gave when the "Neighborhood Safety Zone" initiative was first announced.
If the Chief has specific knowledge of a serious crime that led her to judge that a checkpoint and neighborhood lockdown was her best bet to prevent it, she could have explained that from the beginning and saved herself a lot of grief. We certainly would have reacted less incredulously to such a proposal. Of course, Gary Imhoff and
Dorothy Brizill are deeply skeptical of Lanier's latest statements.
The first story was that it was a reaction to the violence in Trinidad over the weekend of May 31 and June 1; the second was that the administration had been planning the blockage for two months before that time. Now we have the third story, that the blockade was to thwart a particular planned crime; were the police aware of that planned crime more than two months ago? If you’ll buy this latest change in the administration’s story this late in the day, we’ll forward you some E-mails from Nigeria that will let you in on a scheme to get rich overnight.This is part of what today's Washington Post editorial is missing. Everyone is outraged over the murders happening in Ward 5. We all desperately want them to stop -- the notion that the community is only getting angry about the checkpoints seems to ignore the fact that we've been begging for more foot patrols and community policing strategies for a long time. We'll most certainly get behind innovative police tactics that could stem the violence.
But the MPD has a history of being reactive instead of proactive, and as initially presented to the public, the "Neighborhood Safety Zone" plan appeared to be the worst sort of reactive strategy. Violence goes up in some area of the city, so the police swoop in and start messing with your civil rights. If the plan had really been proactive -- to prevent a crime that the department had some previous knowledge of -- why didn't they say so? It's exactly the sort of police effort the community has been asking for, which makes suddenly hearing it from the Chief this late in the game come across an awful lot like lip service.