Prometheus 6

Suburban Cops, Tough Tactics
In area towns, nuisance laws result in a disproportionate number of arrests of African Americans, often by nearly all-white police forces.
By Mark Fazlollah, Dylan Purcell and Keith Herbert
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

The Rev. Reggie Brooks, pastor of a storefront church in the toughest part of Pottstown, once counted himself as a strong supporter of a police crackdown on the pushers and hoodlums who tormented his neighborhood.

That ended on the day his 14-year-old nephew and a friend were hauled out of a neighborhood barbershop last year as suspected drug dealers.

After ordering the teenagers to put their hands in the air and spread their legs, the police found no drugs. They left without an apology.

"There was a time when there was a relationship between the police and the people," said Brooks, who is African American. "Now, I don't think the cops respect the community."

As Philadelphia debates a tougher style of neighborhood policing, public officials and community leaders need look no farther than some of the city's older suburbs to see what happens when police make thousands of nuisance arrests to fight drugs and violence.

Pottstown, Coatesville and Darby, blue-collar towns where jobs have fled and crime has risen, have in recent years consistently recorded some of the highest arrest rates in America for minor offenses, an Inquirer investigation shows.

Norristown, Bristol Township and Colwyn also rely on these high-arrest strategies. Last year alone they dramatically increased arrests for disorderly conduct and other minor crimes.

Year after year, these municipalities and others across the state aggressively enforce noise, nuisance, loitering, disorderly conduct and jaywalking statutes, focusing mainly on high-crime neighborhoods that are home to large numbers of minorities.

Many police chiefs across the suburbs say nuisance laws are an indispensable tool in their quest to rid the streets of serious criminals; they say many of those arrested have long records for drug dealing or violence. They insist that they do not target offenders by race.

But these aggressive tactics, employed in largely minority neighborhoods, mean that African Americans are arrested for nuisance offenses far more frequently than whites - at rates dramatically out of proportion to their numbers in the population.