Back to Special Order 40

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At the urging of libertarian political opportunist Walter Moore, the city of Los Angeles is going back to the well of Special Order 40.

Much has elapsed since the death of an L.A. high school student named Jamiel Shaw, and as I predicted weeks ago, the conversation about his death has become an ugly one about immigration.

Moore has ridden the zeitgeist and pressed a repeal of an LAPD regulation called Special Order 40, which bars police from investigation someone solely to determine his or her citizenship. 40 is intended to encourage illegal immigrants' cooperation in police investigations. (Reasoning: An illegal immigrant will tell police about a crime he has witnessed if he knows he won't get deported for it, proponents say.)

His proposed repeal, called "Jamiel's Law," has no political traction, but a related motion in the city council by a San Fernando Valley council member by the name of Dennis Zine does. Zine wants to amend 40 by requiring officers to check the immigration status of gang members they run into, even if those gang members aren't under arrest.

(The plan has obvious surface flaws. For instance, how do you know who's a gang member and who's just a troublemaker? Sure, there are government lists of gang members, but gang membership changes everyday, and the LAPD's Excel spreadsheets of gang membership cannot possibly keep up. Still, one can understand the appeal of Zine's proposal.)

Whether Zine, Moore, or 40's proponents are right I cannot say. The debate over 40 is typical of a policy debate, in which there are pros and cons, and the "right" policy is the one where the pros outweigh the cons.

I can't say whether the pros outweigh the cons because the debate lacks the statistics that comprise pros and cons here. To determine whether 40 is good policy, you'd have to know things like how many illegal immigrants feel protected by the existence of 40? How many crimes have been solved with an illegal immigrant's help? Et cetera.

Right now, the debate is solely an ideological one: should the LAPD be in the deportation business or not? As we know from watching (for instance) the Bush administration, ideology is not necessarily a springboard to good policy.

As such (and as usual), city council president Eric Garcetti is on the right side here:

We need to look at the big picture and focus on creating a system that effectively deports criminals, encourages cooperation from victims and witnesses, and ensures the federal government accepts its responsibility as the enforcer of our nation's immigration laws.

Sure, he sounds non-committal, but starting from a premise of "these are worthwhile policy goals" is so much more effective than starting from a premise of "I believe illegal immigrants should be ______."

Silly games

They always say the three taboo subjects are as follows: sex, politics, and religion. But no topic draws up the greatest amount of emotion from the fires within people quite like sports. Talk to any Duke fan and they'll go boo-hoo over the seemingly inexplicable amount of hated slung at their team (and then go boo-hoo over another early NCAA Tournament flameout). Wear a Giants hat in Los Angeles and you won't be invited for any more Scrabble Nights at your neighbor's. Show any sign of affinity for the Dallas Cowboys and I'll immediately remove you from my "Top Friends" on MySpace. In our democratic, open, and tolerant society that we enjoy, SP&R are so old-hat. But if another team from Boston wins a championship, then the terrorists have won.

With that in mind, what better place to incite political and social discussion than your weekly dose of Monday Night Football?

Sports serve as a microcosm of the world we live in, as the small segment of the population that we watch compete every day on television is put under a microscope. Every move the athletes make on a playing field or within an arena is scrutinized, and so is every aspect of their lives. The unfortunate death of Sean Taylor (age 24 at death) served as a reminder that "the leading cause of death for black men 15 to 24 is homicide." The probable bolt of college stars Michael Beasley and Derrick Rose to the NBA only adds to already low graduation rates among black students from college. UCLA star freshman Kevin Love has stated that remaining in school for another year is not a "financial issue" for him. I don't know what the financial situation is for Beasley or Rose, but with millions of dollars in their future as high draft picks I don't find it to be just a coincidence that Kevin Love is white and from an affluent suburb (Lake Oswego, Oregon) while Beasley and Rose are both African-American and came from predominantly black urban areas (Baltimore-Washington, D.C. and Chicago, respectively).

Lest we forget the revelry of George Bush throwing the first pitch of Game 3 of the 2001 World Series in Yankees Stadium in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11th. What could be more political than the leader of the free world bringing back a sense of "normalcy" by appearing in the home of the most popular team of "America's Pastime," who also happen to don an Uncle Sam hat in their logo?

With the Summer Olympics looming on the horizon for China, it's safe to say the Chinese Communist Party is nothing short of embarrassed over the turmoil erupting in the disputed province of Tibet and the protests and discussion that it has sparked worldwide. Having experienced their collective excitement firsthand in a trip to China last year (here's a picture of me in front of the newly constructed Beijing National Stadium), the people and government of China are treating the Games as more than just a global revelry of sports and nationalistic pride, but as their welcoming party into the world stage. Having long been the 1.3 billion-large Communist elephant in the room of global politics, the Chinese people are viewing the Summer Games as their globalization bar mitzvah.

That's fine and all; as I said before we've always attached an inflated sense of value to what is basically men and women playing a game and there is nothing wrong with that. So then why are people backing off from the notion of a full boycott of the Olympic Games saying that the Olympics are not a place for politics? The Olympics are a perfect place for politics. If that's not the case then Jesse Owens showing up Hitler in his own backyard, the Black Power salute in the 1968 games, and the Miracle On Ice are all just another moment in the dominance of the United States in international competition and nothing more. What other time do you have every nation of the world represented in a forum where the spotlight is shining down upon them and millions of people are watching? Last time I checked, the General Assembly of the United Nations doesn't draw a high Nielsen rating.

So this August when the Games start, don't forget the charter of the Olympics aims to "create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles." I'm not calling for or supporting any sort of boycott of the Olympics, but I don't want people to let the Chinese government's blatant abuse of human rights not only in Tibet but throughout their country swept underneath the rug in the midst of the seemingly benign Games.

Sports are just fun and games, but they can be so much more than that. And that's why I love them.

photograph by shalvas

Kwame, Eliot, and Getting What You Pay for

photograph by Cave Canem

I hate how liberal I'm going to sound when I say this, but America needs to get over its prostitution hang-up.

The reason I've ended up at this conclusion is Kwame Kilpatrick. Kilpatrick is the disgraced mayor of Detroit, who, so far as we know, did not have sex with any prostitutes. What he did do was have an extramarital affair with his chief of staff, Christine Beatty (and, it has been alleged in court, at least three other women, in addition to throwing stripper parties at the city-owned mayoral residence). He then allegedly had fired, and thus ruined the careers of, those policemen investigating both his misconduct and abuses by his security team. When those officers fought back and won a Whistleblower Protection Act lawsuit against the city worth $6.5 million in damages, Kilpatrick (who is black) publicly pulled the race card and vowed to appeal. But in the end, he quietly offered a settlement of $8.4 million.

If that sudden change of heart doesn't make sense to you, it's because, as The Detroit Free Press discovered, the $8.4 million settlement included a secret deal in which all parties agreed to hide the existence of incriminating text messages between Kilpatrick and Beatty. In other words, Kilpatrick tried to spend $8.4 million in taxpayer money to cover up an affair. (Well, one could say that the $6.5 million was for the illegal firings - which, remember, he was allegedly responsible for in the first place - and the extra $2.1 million in taxpayer money to be the actual price of silence.)

I first heard about this when Slate ran some of the text messages on its website almost two months ago. Unbelievably, Kilpatrick is still mayor, despite being indicted on Monday with eight felonies, including perjury. The media coverage has been widespread, but certainly not scandalous. There's none of the national moral outrage that was so fervent just two weeks ago.

Eliot Spitzer had sex with prostitutes.

Going to Get Ugly

photograph by mirandapablo

The Associated Press scooped all the L.A. papers this morning, following up on a rumor that the gang member who stands accused of killing high school football star Jamiel Shaw might be – wait for it – an illegal alien.

A spokesperson for the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said the alleged killer may or may not be an illegal alien, and that they may not know for sure for awhile.

The accused killer, Pedro Espinoza, had just finished serving a four month prison term the day before Jamiel was shot. He was serving a sentence for brandishing a weapon and resisting arrest.

So, just to recap, this story now

• Has a youth-on-the-right-path narrative
• Has a youth-on-the-wrong-path narrative
• Contains brown-on-black violence
• Includes a gang member
  
• Includes a star athlete
  
• Has an immigration thread
• Has a prison system thread
  
• Is happening during a spike-in-crime
  

and to top it all off with a big dollop of symbolism, the victim was a student at a high school named Los Angeles.

With the new information about the accused's immigration status, it would be naive to think that Shaw's death will not immediately become a rallying point for anti-immigrant hatred. I predict Lou Dobbs will begin to talk about it in approximately 14 seconds.

Never mind that Espinoza has not been, you know, convicted.

Another aspect likely to be overlooked, due to a combination of Los Angeles's current fog of fear and the coming tsunami of talk show immigration rhetoric, is the total uselessness of the prison system. If Espinoza is indeed the killer, this is someone committing a murder the day after he got out of jail. Taking him as an example – though he's certainly not unique in this sense – it's pretty clear that our prisons do little to discourage recidivism.

It seems to me that the whole concept of imprisonment as a solution to criminal behavior is based on a principle that imprisonment prevents people from committing crimes again. If prisons are not discouraging repeat offenses, what's the point?

Maybe one might think the reason for prisons is just to satisfy a sort of primal need for revenge. But if that's all we require of a post-conviction system, we could put convicts in the stocks and throw rotten fruit at them and then be done with it.

No, imprisonment must have some other goal. But whatever that goal is, it's not being accomplished – and at a cost to California taxpayers of over $10 billion per year, growing 9% annually.

That's one tenth of the state's revenues.