Baghdad, D.C.

The news came out today, that to counteract major violence in our capitol's 5th Police District, Mayor Adrian Fenty has signed an Executive Order allowing for a police lockdown and roadblocks of certain parts of that district, known as the Trinidad neighborhood. Read about it here and here.

There are many aspects of this that are troubling to me. First and foremost amongst them are the apparent inconsistencies with the Constitution. The Washington Post article references a similar lockdown in the Bronx in 1992 that survived legal challenges, leading the 2nd Circuit to hold that it "served an important public concern" and was "reasonably viewed as an effective mechanism to deter crime in the barricaded area." This seems more like a court applying the law to the immediate facts without any deference to constitutional standards.

The standard for pulling over a car, or "arresting" (in the most literal sense of restricting someone's movement) is reasonable suspicion of criminal behavior. This principle comes from Terry v. Ohio a 1968 case, and Michigan v. Long (as applicable to vehicle "frisks") a 1983 case, which the Supreme Court still upholds as good law. Surely, Mayor Fenty and the police commissioner cannot rationally argue that the police have reasonable suspicion to stop everyone entering this neighborhood.

On top of the constitutional issues, there is also the issue of police-community relations. This is not a good way for the police to build up their trust within the community, a trust that they need to build and maintain to curb the violence and promote an atmosphere where people aren't afraid to report violence and drugs. The heavy-handed maneuver that D.C. has chosen puts an entire new dynamic into the mix. The dynamic is race-relations, power struggles and roughly analogous situation to the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Many people today are most shocked by the fact that Mayor Fenty has signed off on this program. I for one am not. Mayor's of large cities face a strong dynamic force because they are there, on the ground, facing the pressure every day. Political theories and platforms of all kinds break down when it comes to facing real world challenges. Nowhere is this truer than for a mayor of a large city, especially one with a booming violent crime rate where everyone is turning to you to fix it. And of course you can't fix it, because you can't communicate directly to the perpetrators- and even if you could, they wouldn't all listen. So you do something, anything, and you run it by your lawyers- they give you the go ahead and you run with it, because in politics, the perception that you are doing nothing is far more deadly than the perception that you are doing something unconstitutional. And voters, who are afraid for their lives, are far less likely to question actions that threaten the constitution when their lives and safety are at risk. Therefore, the cost of inaction is much higher to a politician in this instance, than say, the cost of unconstitutional action.

I am not suggesting that this common dynamic is an excuse for Mayor Fenty, but merely an explanation of the forces that drive one to such action. It is precisely because it is easier to go down this path with the heavy hand, as opposed to going in, establishing relationships and working with the community, that we need community groups and local and national legal groups to raise up a challenge to such action.

What D.C. is doing is sad, if not at all surprising. Where once our nation was pictured as the "shining city on the hill, " our capitol is now pushing the line of martial law and a police state mentality. Sure, this one step may be a ways off from that line. But it is one step in the wrong direction and our "city on the hill" is certainly not shining today.