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 Editorials | August 2005 
Truth-Telling on Race? Not in Bush's Fantasyland
 Bob Herbert - NYTimes
| | President Bush supporter Akif Tayim, originally from Haifa, Iraq but now living in Dallas, uses an SUV window as a mirror to shave on the side of Prairie Chapel Road that leads to President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Bush supporters have set up Camp Reality across the street from the original anti-war Camp Casey. (Photo: LM Otero) |
The Bush administration has punished a Justice Department official who dared to tell even a mild truth about racial profiling by law enforcement officers in this country.
In 2001 President Bush selected Lawrence Greenfeld to head the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which tracks crime patterns and police tactics, among other things. But as Eric Lichtblau of The Times reported in a front-page article yesterday, Mr. Greenfeld is being demoted because he complained that senior political officials were seeking to play down newly compiled data about the aggressive treatment of black and Hispanic drivers by police officers.
My first thought when I read the story was that burying the messenger who tells uncomfortable truths has always been a favorite tactic of this administration, which seems to exist largely in a world of fantasy. (Grown-ups don't do well in the Bush playtime environment. Remember Gen. Eric Shinseki? And former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill?)
My second thought was of a couple of stories from several years ago that dramatically illustrated the differences in the ways that white and black drivers can be treated.
Rachel Ellen Ondersma was a 17-year-old high school senior when she was stopped by the police in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Nov. 14, 1998. She had been driving erratically, the police said, and when she failed a Breathalyzer test, she was placed under arrest.
An officer cuffed Ms. Ondersma's hands behind her and left her alone in the back seat of a police cruiser. What happened after that was captured on a video camera mounted inside the vehicle. And while it would eventually be shown on the Fox television program "World's Wackiest Police Videos," it was not funny.
The camera offered a clear view through the cruiser's windshield. The microphone picked up the sound of Ms. Ondersma sobbing, then the clink of the handcuffs as she began maneuvering to free herself. She apparently stepped through her arms so her hands, still cuffed, were in front of her. Then she climbed into the front seat, started the engine and roared off. With the car hurtling along, tires squealing, Ms. Ondersma could be heard moaning, "What am I doing?" and, "They are going to have to kill me."
She roared onto a freeway, where she was clocked by pursuing officers at speeds up to 80 miles per hour. She crashed into a concrete barrier, and officers, thinking they had her boxed in, jumped out of their vehicles. But Ms. Ondersma backed up, then lurched forward and plowed into one of the police cars.
Gunfire could be heard as the police began shooting out her tires. The teenager backed up, lurched forward and crashed into the cop car again. An officer had to leap out of the way to keep from being struck.
Ms. Ondersma tried to speed away once more, but by then at least two of her tires were flat and she could no longer control the vehicle. She crashed into another concrete divider and was finally surrounded.
As I watched the videotape, I was amazed at the way she was treated when she was pulled from the cruiser. The police did not seem particularly upset. They were not rough with her, and no one could be heard cursing. One officer said: "Calm down, all right? I think you've caused enough trouble for one day."
Ms. Ondersma is white. As I watched the video, I kept thinking about an incident on the New Jersey Turnpike in April 1998 in which four young men in a van were pulled over by state troopers. Three of the men were black and one was Hispanic. They were neither drunk nor abusive. But their van did roll slowly backward, accidentally bumping the leg of one of the troopers and striking the police vehicle.
The troopers drew their weapons and opened fire. When the shooting stopped, three of the four young men had been shot and seriously wounded.
The beginning of the end of Lawrence Greenfeld's tenure as director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics came a few months ago, as his agency was completing a major study showing that black and Hispanic drivers were treated more aggressively than whites when stopped by the police.
Mr. Greenfeld was overruled when he tried to include references to these disparities in a news release announcing the findings of the study. The study was then buried in the bowels of the Bush bureaucracy.
Mr. Greenfeld obviously failed to understand that the preferred methods of dealing with uncomfortable facts in the fantasyland of the Bush administration are to ignore them, or simply wish them away. |
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