cuchulainn
Member
from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/may03/142688.asp
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/may03/142688.asp
Activists protest Clarke's gun searches
Fourth Amendment rights violated, they say
By LEONARD SYKES JR.
[email protected]
Last Updated: May 22, 2003
A coalition of community groups Thursday demanded that Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr., provide more accountability to his controversial gun crimes task force or disband it.
Clarke's consent to search program has been under way for nearly seven weeks now. However, as a team of 16 sheriff's deputies patrol the streets asking drivers stopped for minor infractions for permission to search their vehicles, community activists say they doubt that deputies explain that vehicle searches are completely voluntary.
During Thursday's press conference in the City Hall rotunda, the groups charged that Clarke's Gun Reduction Interdiction Program, called GRIP, is a harassment campaign aimed at violating the Fourth Amendment rights of citizens, particularly minorities.
"We are here to demonstrate and show the people that we support efforts to make our streets safe," said Robert Miranda, a community activist and editor of the Spanish Journal.
"But we are not going to surrender our civil rights and civil liberties in order for that to happen."
Representatives from seven community organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, the Greater Milwaukee Green Party and the Milwaukee chapter of the National Black United Front want Clarke to launch a public relations campaign to explain his program.
At a Wednesday meeting with Journal Sentinel reporters and editors, Clarke defended the gun program and said it is too soon to make judgments.
"The critics of this program have not offered an alternative," he added. "The way I see it, the alternative is to let these killers roam the streets of our neighborhoods."
Clarke added that he is doing "everything reasonable" to ensure that people stopped by deputies are treated fairly.
"I'm not going to allow any citizen to have their rights violated or be abused by a law enforcement officer," Clarke said.
Clarke contends that consent searches, in which police get drivers' permission to search vehicles stopped for minor infractions, could help police find drugs and guns.
But critics say the practice invites abuse. In 1999, as concerns about racial profiling heated up nationwide, Police Chief Arthur Jones changed Milwaukee Police policy to require that officers be able to demonstrate a "reasonable and articulable suspicion of evidence of contraband contained within the vehicle" if they seek consent to search.
Milwaukee Police are not involved in the sheriff's effort.
Ifama Jackson, a representative of the Milwaukee chapter of the National Black United Front, said Clarke has thus far failed to explain why sheriff's deputies are able to engage in a consent to search campaign that Milwaukee police are now forbidden to do.
"The sheriff's initiative . . .seems to be one that circumvents the protection against what we know will be discriminatory searches with little to no accountability," Jackson said.
Reid J. Epstein of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.
© Copyright 2003, Journal Sentinel Inc.
