EDITOR’S VIEWPOINT/Police departments balk at Ashcroft’s request
The police department in Portland, Ore., is in a tight spot. It does not want to be the poster child for civil libertarians. At the same time, it finds it cannot honor the request of Attorney General John Ashcroft, who wants its policemen to ask 23 Portland residents questions the department believes are none of its business.
So the department finds itself in the position of having to defend itself against charges that it is 1) an organization singlehandedly carrying aloft the banner of freedom or 2) unpatriotic.
It all started when Ashcroft enlisted local law enforcement to help him root out suspected terrorists. He gave police departments across the country a list of 5,000 names and asked them to identify the names within their jurisdictions and go ask those people questions. The vast majority of the questions were the kind any cop would ask any potential witness to a criminal act. Some, however, were more personal.
That’s where Portland police balked. State law forbids the police from asking any questions that are not specifically pertinent to the criminal investigation at hand. So Police Chief Mark Croker instructed his officers that they could not participate in the kind of questioning Ashcroft wanted. The city attorney agreed with Croker, as did the state’s legislative counsel.
Now Croker is inundated with interview requests from people proclaiming him either a hero or a stinking Commie. All he wants to be is a good police chief.
While Croker fends off interview requests, some police departments in the San Francisco Bay Area are telling Ashcroft in no uncertain terms that they do not intend to be a part of his interrogations. And FBI agents who are sent to do the dirty work for the recalcitrant police say they aren’t really sure what good they are accomplishing.
To many, the interviews look a lot like racial profiling, and the information being elicited seems largely irrelevant. According to Time magazine, as part of Justice-ordered questioning, one California student was questioned about her future marriage plans. Yet Ashcroft is refusing to allow the FBI access to the federal gun-purchases database. If you are trying to find criminals, gun purchases seem a much more realistic way to start than does some girl’s love life.
Since Sept. 11, local police departments have had their hands full dealing with everything from bogus bomb threats and fake anthrax scares to heightened security concerns in airports and tall buildings. Sending them on quixotic missions to interview people just because they are named Mohammed seems a waste of their time — and our money.
When police departments start doing that, Americans are in grave peril. And not from terrorists.