February 12, 1996
Web posted at: 3:45 p.m. EST
From Correspondent Charles Feldman
LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- The figures are clear: The overwhelming number of arrests made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Los Angeles for crack cocaine trafficking are in the city's African-American communities.
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Even if the police beating of motorist Rodney King had never occurred; even if a riot had not jolted the city; and even if O.J. Simpson's defense did not hinge on charges of a police frame-up -- even if all those things had never happened, charges that the FBI in Los Angeles is unfairly and routinely targeting the black community for drug arrests would be disturbing.
But because all of those other things did happen, some legal observers in the city are alarmed by what they believe to be a federal policy of racial discrimination aimed at blacks.
As a federal public defender in Los Angeles, Barbara O'Connor represents many of the black defendants who are arrested by the FBI for selling crack cocaine.
"What we would be interested in knowing is why they focus on only the minority community," she said.
U.S. government figures show that more than 90 percent of all federal prosecutions for crack cocaine last year were of African-American defendants. In Los Angeles, the figure was 75 percent.
The FBI says what it is targeting in Los Angeles are violent street gangs who distribute crack and who have infested the city's minority communities. That strategy is the most cost-efficient, FBI spokesman Charlie Parsons said.
"The biggest disservice we can pay to minority communities -- this is Latino and African-American -- would be to take our scarce resources and put them in areas of low crime rates where there aren't any minorities."
Besides, Parsons added, black communities embrace law enforcement efforts. Recently, in fact, the head of the Los Angeles FBI office attended a yearly swearing-in ceremony for block leaders in the city's mostly black south-central district.
But others in that same district think the FBI is unfairly going after blacks while ignoring major distributors who don't even live in the community. (188K AIFF sound or 188K WAV sound)
What is most unsettling to some in the city's black communities is this: Under federal sentencing guidelines, a conviction for selling crack cocaine can carry a lengthy prison term without benefit of parole -- a far harsher punishment, some contend, than what is dished out to wealthy white defendants who are caught using more expensive powdered cocaine and other drugs.
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