Thursday, March 27, 2014

The General Mess of 'Prosecutorial Discretion.'

Kids, I've been avoiding this one for awhile now, but I feel like I'm ready to take it on and dip my feet in the debate that's roiling local politics and leading to runs on tin-foil in the local grocery stores so that members of the Press-Citizen Commentariat have their hats all ready to go when someone sends a letter to the editor or writes another opinion piece about it.

Yes, I'm putting my two cents in about the race for County Attorney.  It's incumbent Janet Lyness going up against the challenger John Zimmerman.  While I'm more or less indifferent to Janet Lyness- she seems to do a good job and has shown a commitment to increasing alcohol and drug diversion programs in the county, which I think is a good thing, John Zimmerman seems to have embraced all the tendencies that I find absolutely rage-inducing about white Progressive Liberals.

First of all, it's important to note that Mr. Zimmerman has not yet passed the bar.  He hopes to by the time election day roles around, but so far, he's graduate law school, has a law degree but no license to practice law, which I'm also assuming means that he doesn't have a lick of practical experience working in the court room, which I think is sort of important for a County Attorney to have.

Second of all, his major beef and the main plank of his platform is that he wants to end prosecutions for marijuana possession and public intoxication in Johnson County.  This is troubling to me on several aspects- first, Mr. Zimmerman might be quite right and might indeed have the discretion not to prosecute these cases.  However, this discretion in no way extends to any law enforcement agency in the county.  He may well have the luxury of some discretion, but until state laws are changed, law enforcement does not.   This is what I find so hair-tearingly frustrating about Mr. Zimmerman's candidacy.  At a time when momentum for reform of our insane drug laws is building nationwide, the focus should be on changing those laws, not 'making a point' or 'taking a stand.'  Everything that Mr. Zimmerman takes issue with- all of it can be solved by merely changing the law.  You change the law and you change the enforcement- it's that simple.

Finally, there's the 'disproportionate minority contact' thing.  This is an incredibly vague term, to me-- in the scope of what law enforcement officers do on a daily basis, there's really not that much that officers initiate themselves.  (Traffic stops would be an example of something they initiate themselves.)  The majority of time, cops go where they're sent- which means, someone calls 911 and says 'HELP' and they go.  That's the job.  So where is this 'disproportionate minority contact' coming from?  Is it officer initiated?  Is it not? If it's the former then there should be a conversation about the DMC charge and potential racial impropriety on the part of the police, it's the latter, well then, that raises a whole different kettle of chips.

I think blaming the cops is easy- it's especially easy in a town full of Progressive White Liberals that pat themselves on the back and say 'I voted for Obama twice, there's no way I could possibly be racist'- but ignores a conversation that Iowa City has needed to have for a very long time indeed.  People talk about 'newcomers' or say things like 'Oh, they're from Chicago.'  Whole neighborhoods south of the highway are generally referred to as 'the ghetto.'  Does anyone really believe that people don't want the Post Office to move down to Pepperwood Place because it's 'inconvenient?'   For all it's pretensions at being a bastion of tolerance and diversity, pop the hood on this town and you'll find that Iowa City is exactly like every other small town in Iowa.  Back biting, gossiping, a distrust of outsiders and yes, thinly or not so thinly veiled racism can be found if you look for it.  So if you pick up the phone and call 911 because you don't like the look of the African-American teens walking around your neighborhood, is that the cops being racist or is it you being racist?

Don't get me wrong:  I'm not discounting the possibility that law enforcement has work to do as well- but I think it's incumbent upon law enforcement to always be looking for ways to better serve everyone in their community- including people of color.  And yes, law enforcement attracts all types of personalities, including some that fit every stereotype you can think of about cops.  But if I've learned one hard and fast rule about cops that is about as close to universal as you can get it's that they hate paperwork- and trouble- whether it's trouble they find on a traffic stop or trouble they get sent to via a 911 call always equals paperwork.  Not being a person of color, I can't discount (nor am I going to be so blind as to my white male privilege as to deny some of these stories aren't true) the stories of potential racial profiling on the part of local cops- but the narrative that local cops are always out 'looking for trouble' or 'looking for young, African-American males to harass' runs contrary to everything I've experienced while working in law enforcement.

Needless to say, I'm not voting for Mr. Zimmerman- in fact, it's awfully tempting to change my party affiliation just so I can vote against him- but to be fair to the guy, I was oddly neutral about it all, figuring that the Townie Elite would line up against the Libertarian-Lefties and back Lyness, but then I listened to an absolute trainwreck of an interview he gave on KCJJ and noticed that even John Deeth wasn't lining up behind this guy and I figured if you've lost Deeth, you've lost Iowa City and probably Johnson County.

As always, I speak for myself and myself alone with stuff like this.

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