Police State

EVERY WEEK, it seems, a new form of technology for enforcing laws and improving security in America is debated - national ID cards, street cameras, computer-assisted profiling. And every week the same arguments, laden with Orwell references, are tossed around. Are we becoming a police state? Is it worth giving up this freedom for that security increase? True security will require sweeping increases in technology, but it will only help if we rethink how we create and enforce our laws.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled with uncommon wisdom this week when it decided in an 8-1 decision that a Houston ordinance making it a crime to oppose or "interrupt any policeman in the execution of his duty" is unconstitutionally broad. Interference with police has resulted in numerous arrests throughout the country. And the entire issue has spawned predictable reactions among many citizens. "If suspects haven't done anything wrong, they ought to be willing to allow the police to search their persons, their cars or their homes.

Armed government guards got on trains near the border to interrogate capriciously selected passengers about their citizenship and then carted away those who could not produce papers. The Soviet Union? East Germany? Well, no. It was the U.S. Border Patrol on an Amtrak in Rochester, N.Y. - close to the Canadian border. Border Patrol agents can question any person believed to be an alien concerning his or her right to be in America. They can do so within 100 miles from our external boundaries, including the one 12 miles off the coast.

Departing Police Commissioner Richard Neal was honored at a West Philadelphia street ceremony yesterday, but a principal speaker voiced concern that his replacement might return the city to the days of police brutality. Roland Delaney, a community activist known as the "mayor of 52d Street", told a crowd of about 200 people at the ceremony, "I'm hoping the next 22 months won't [bring] . . . a police state which our community will live to regret. " John F. Timoney, former first deputy commissioner of the New York City Police Department, takes office as Philadelphia police commissioner tomorrow.

The world economy may or may not have emerged stronger from last week's G-20 summit in Pittsburgh. And the first non-capital city to host the summit enjoyed the public-relations boon of showcasing its Phoenix-like rise from the ashes of the steel industry. But the Constitution took a hit. Government officials decided a massive, preemptive police presence was necessary to avoid the raucous demonstrations that marred past economic summits. They established a virtual police state that quickly extinguished any spark of dissent, and a federal court ruling gave them free rein to do so. To begin with, there was an oxymoronic requirement that groups get permits to march and demonstrate during the summit.

Though national polls show most Americans in favor of recent government actions to combat terrorism at home - such as military tribunals and secret detention of illegal immigrants - only about a third of about 100 responses we received approved of those policies. Rational, prudent measures I am a legal immigrant and a proud naturalized citizen of the United States who grew up in and then escaped from a police state. As a little girl in Hungary, I dreaded every knock on the front door and was petrified of men in uniforms.

What do two soccer coaches, a bobsledder, a legislator and a journalist have in common? The Stasi. Following revelation after revelation about the dreaded, now-defunct East German secret police force, which touched virtually every aspect of life in the old communist state, it sometimes seems harder to figure out who wasn't a collaborator than who was. Finally, 18 months after unification, the German Bundestag, or parliament, decided this...

This ain't Chicago, 1968. Or even Philadelphia, 2000. As of late last night, there had been not a single arrest at the Democratic National Convention. Massachusetts authorities had projected between 1,500 and 2,500 for the four-day convention. "It's been pretty amazing so far," said Dave Estrada, spokesman for the Boston Police Department, crediting a year of preparation among federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies. For their part, activists were crediting the locked-down nature of the convention center, the circling helicopters, the hidden cameras.

While noon bells bonged and SEPTA buses (fashionably red-white-and-blue) rumbled by the other day, business was sparse at the soapbox across from Independence Hall. It's a rustic, unimposing platform, the soapbox, inviting free speakers - as part of the city's Constitution celebration - to exercise their constitutional right to blow off steam, as long as they don't hog the space forever, or shout fire when none is in evidence. Charles Clark, a preacher from the Solid Rock Baptist Church in West Berlin, N.J., slipped his New Testament from his back pocket, mounted the soapbox, cupped his hands to his mouth and railed about gays and those who would "throw prayer out of the public schools.

What about the Israelis? In his April 26 letter, K.R. Cordner complains about the so-called suicide bombers who killed about a dozen people. I wonder what Mr. Cordner has to say about the Israeli Army killing hundreds of Palestinians and destroying many homes with ruthless disregard for the civilian population. Harry Wallace, Philadelphia The DA's bandwagon DA Lynn Abraham just had to jump on the bandwagon with the ongoing crisis in the Catholic Church. Who needs her grand jury?

Armed government guards got on trains near the border to interrogate capriciously selected passengers about their citizenship and then carted away those who could not produce papers. The Soviet Union? East Germany? Well, no. It was the U.S. Border Patrol on an Amtrak in Rochester, N.Y. - close to the Canadian border. Border Patrol agents can question any person believed to be an alien concerning his or her right to be in America. They can do so within 100 miles from our external boundaries, including the one 12 miles off the coast.

IWAS HAVING coffee with a friend at 15th and Sansom not long ago when, out of nowhere, a group of teens burst onto the scene. The energy that came with them was palpable. Tense, wired, high-strung - it literally crackled, and we felt it. As it turns out, we'd witnessed a tiny part of a would-be flash mob from Broad Street, and I thought to myself - as I have every time this happens in Philadelphia - "They should be dancing. " Bill Wasik, the senior editor at Harper's who created the flash mob, uses it as a tool for playful social gatherings.

The world economy may or may not have emerged stronger from last week's G-20 summit in Pittsburgh. And the first non-capital city to host the summit enjoyed the public-relations boon of showcasing its Phoenix-like rise from the ashes of the steel industry. But the Constitution took a hit. Government officials decided a massive, preemptive police presence was necessary to avoid the raucous demonstrations that marred past economic summits. They established a virtual police state that quickly extinguished any spark of dissent, and a federal court ruling gave them free rein to do so. To begin with, there was an oxymoronic requirement that groups get permits to march and demonstrate during the summit.

For nearly 90 years, state troopers have patrolled rural New Jersey, responding to medical emergencies, car crashes and burglar alarms. So when state officials detailed their plans last week to begin charging towns for the service, the reaction was largely anger and, in some communities, confusion. In Mansfield, which the state wants to bill $264,000 for what it considers "full-time" police patrols, administrator Joseph Broski said the town hadn't relied on state police for two years.

Rau's ruling Judge Lisa Rau's acquittal of a man who police eyewitnesses testified was involved in a drug transaction affirms a vitally important point about our criminal justice system ("Judge's verdict draws criticism from police," April 7). Various legal protections - including burdening the prosecutor with proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt - ensure that for every innocent defendant who is found not guilty, there are guilty defendants who go free. Rau did not have to conclude that the police witnesses were lying, or that the defendant was telling the truth in asserting his innocence, in order to find him not guilty.

The New Jersey Attorney General has zeroed in on the Camden and Atlantic City Police Departments for a crimefighting overhaul, giving the beleaguered cities top priority to get the computerized policing tools that have been in use in New York and Philadelphia for more than a decade. In recent weeks, state Attorney General Anne Milgram sent consultants to the two cities to begin work on upgrading computer systems so they can eventually conduct strategic policing with the crime-mapping system known as Compstat.

EVER SINCE the Daily News published my letter about the proposed stop-and-frisk campaign that mayoral candidate Michael Nutter has proposed, I've been inundated with responses from members of the black community. Many have been positive, some negative, and I want to share them. Some people are afraid of a police state, many have concerns about abuse of power by the police and fear a return of practices like those of the Rizzo era. Although many black people fear the police, I grew up when Frank Rizzo was mayor, and we have more to fear today than at any time back then.

Later this month, the United Nations Secretariat will hold its yearly exam to recruit staff from among member states for the U.N.'s worldwide professional service. Among those now eligible are nationals of North Korea. Which raises a question unlikely to be included in this exam: What is North Korea doing in the U.N. in the first place? If recruiting North Koreans to work inside the U.N. sounds like a good way to integrate the rogue regime of Kim Jong Il into civilized and responsible company, think again.

I promise not to use the word dystopian. Whoops. Children of Men, Alfonso Cuaron's stunning adaptation of the P.D. James book, is set in near-future Britain, an ominous place where illegal immigrants are corraled for deportation, where the government surveils all, where the police are a paramilitary operation, infiltrating, arresting and occasionally killing any person, or group, opposed to its cause. The very near future. It's hell-in-a-handbasket time. By a cause unknown (carcinogens in the food chain?

EVERY WEEK, it seems, a new form of technology for enforcing laws and improving security in America is debated - national ID cards, street cameras, computer-assisted profiling. And every week the same arguments, laden with Orwell references, are tossed around. Are we becoming a police state? Is it worth giving up this freedom for that security increase? True security will require sweeping increases in technology, but it will only help if we rethink how we create and enforce our laws.