I Publius

PROSECUTE LITTLE CRIMES, TO REDUCE THE BIG CRIMES

Let's go back to the once-infamous Great Barrington parking lot,
where, thanks to the good work of the Berkshire County Drug Task
Force, a number of young people were arrested for selling marijuana,
cocaine, ecstasy and other illegal substances. You will recall that
the situation had become intolerable, with kids from all over the
place congregating at the lot, making it not only uninviting, but
also dangerous for our citizens.

There were taunts and physical provocations, and the good people of
the town were not happy.

Since those arrests, the parking lot has been a much friendlier place
to walk through.

In other words, law enforcement works. The arrests were made, and
District Attorney David F. Capeless stuck to his guns. The kids would
be charged under the commonwealth's law that imposes stricter
penalties for selling drugs within 1,000 feet of a school, including
a minimum mandatory two-year jail sentence.

The stupid kids and some of their parents must have known about the
consequences, since, from time to time, the papers had reported about
others who had violated the law and done the time. Why it took the
Berkshire County Drug Task Force to make the arrests is anybody's guess.

My theory is that the local Police Department, for whatever its
reasons, didn't care, or even want the parking lot cleaned up. It
only called in the county task force because of the outrage over
drugs in the town.

It has always been one of my taxpayer gripes that we pay our huge
Police Department a fortune, yet we virtually never see a cop where
we ought to, patrolling the streets of Great Barrington. That may
explain why my hero, Pam Drumm, is wailing about how much new
graffiti there is in town. What's more, she says, the tough Mayor
Rudy Giuliani and his police commissioners, and the mayors and
police commissioners who succeeded him, found that, when you make
arrests for the little crimes, the big ones take a nosedive, too. In
New York City, they keep files and do active investigations looking
for the folks who do the graffiti damage. The problem, of course, is
the mandatory two-year-sentence law. It's just too much time in jail or prison.

Our state representative, William "Smitty" Pignatelli, said he would
file legislation to change that, but so far he hasn't. The first of
the parking lot kids came to trial and was acquitted after his first
trial ended in a mistrial, a frustrating situation for the DA. The
law was clear, and I think the evidence was clear, but the good
citizens sitting in that box would not convict.

Perhaps they believed that the law was flawed and the penalties too
great, and that they all undoubtedly knew someone who had
smoked some weed. Since that time, there has been an additional
guilty plea and a conviction involving two other defendants. So here
we are, back to square one. How does a district attorney tell all
those people who have done their time that "community service" should
substitute for jail time? The papers have been filled with letters
that look pretty organized to me. On the one hand are the folks who
think that the kids should basically walk, and on the other, the
law-and-order folks who say that the little darlings of the middle
class did the crime and should do the time. I would not like to be
the district attorney.

I think that the people in Great Barrington, including lots of
merchants who were suffering terribly with the old situation, leaned
on the DA to do what was right, and he did. The DA knows, and I think
he is right, that if everyone gets off the hook, the kids will be
right back in that parking lot selling drugs.

Some say that the kids have learned their lesson.

My hope is that the parents and their friends come to their senses
and understand that there are consequences for illegal and antisocial
actions. Although a two-year sentence for a first offender may be too
much, walking free is too little.

We've got to send the message that laws will be followed.

I think that we need regular police patrols on the street.

I think that if we do not resolve this, we'll go right back to a
parking lot or a main street where kids endanger our tourist business
and our citizens with their unruly and irresponsible behavior.

We have recently been hearing tales of drugs in our high school. This
is serious stuff.

It may well be that marijuana will have to be decriminalized. If that
is appropriate, do it. But allowing people to break the law is the
road to hell, pure and simple.