COMMENTARY
Rod Watson: Add stupidity to list of anticrime tactics
Maybe it’s just me, but if I were smoking marijuana, ferrying cocaine or driving around with an unregistered handgun under the seat, I’d be very careful about coming to a complete stop at every octagonal sign.
I’d use my turn signal religiously.
And under no circumstances would I be caught red-handed with black windows.
But thank God for stupid criminals.
Long a staple of Jay Leno’s late-night routine, they’re also making life easier for state troopers looking to rid the streets of drugs and guns under the Operation IMPACT program that assists Buffalo police in high-crime areas.
In one recent arrest, three men in a van on Bailey Avenue were charged with criminal possession of marijuana after a routine traffic stop. What got troopers’ attention?
The driver wasn’t wearing his seat belt and was tooling around with tinted windows.
• A driver on Gatchell Street got caught with 6 grams of crack cocaine. Why was he stopped in the first place?
His windows had too much tint.
• In another arrest stemming from a traffic stop, a 26-year-old woman just happened to have a crack pipe. Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of the driveway.
“A lot of these people don’t abide by vehicle and traffic laws,” Capt. Steven A. Nigrelli, State Police zone commander, says in a classic bit of understatement.
“And they have suspended registrations,” he adds.
Even Nigrelli marvels at some of the geniuses State Police pick up. He recalled one guy who pulled up to a checkpoint that he must have seen a mile away, only to tell troopers, “Yeah, I have a gun underneath the front seat.”
Not that Buffalo’s criminal masterminds have a lock on brain-cramp. If they dressed better, they could be Ken Lay or Bernie Madoff. But the white-collar dunces don’t shoot anybody. And that’s the serious point behind what the troopers and local cops are doing.
In the last year, Nigrelli said, Operation IMPACT has made 230 drug arrests, 225 warrant arrests, recovered eight stolen cars and taken 13 guns and other weapons off Buffalo’s streets.
Using computerized crime statistics and other intelligence to zero in on hot spots while they’re still hot, the seven-member team helps the city’s Mobile Response Unit saturate a neighborhood. The goal is to prevent law-abiding residents from being prisoners in their own homes.
Obviously, such programs can go overboard. But Nigrelli says his officers use discretion.
Some of those who would have heard about abuses report no such complaints. Marc L. Fuller, chairman of the Stop the Violence Coalition, says the State Police doesn’t seem to be “a harassing type of organization.”
Regional ACLU Executive Director John L. Curr III also hasn’t gotten complaints, though he warns that people in crime-ridden neighborhoods may be so desperate for help that “they will accept even the most unwarranted intrusions.”
Community activist Darnell Jackson’s only complaint is that the state should be even tougher, making more use of the federal Project Exile that sends away for a long time anyone caught with an illegal gun.
That call is not in Nigrelli’s hands; all his troopers can do is make the arrests.
Fortunately—for them and for us— cars aren’t sold with Miranda warnings for those whose driving habits can and will be used against them.
“You have people with drugs and guns driving with no seat belt on,” the zone commander says.
After every such arrest, troopers should add one more charge: felony stupidity, first degree.
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