The Rights of the People by David K. Shipler Read Free Book Online Page B

the center console. “Is that a drink?” He was fishing for a violation—open alcohol—that would get him inside the vehicle.
    Now the driver was fully engaged in proving his innocence, so he unlocked the door and picked up the cup to show that it was empty. Underneath, Neill spotted a little bag of crack, he said later, at which point, based on the “plain view” doctrine, he had the right to search the car without consent. So he did, poking his head inside and rummaging around while the driver argued. “What have I done? I done nothing! I do not give you permission to search.”
    On the floor in front of the passenger seat, Neill came up with a black gym bag. He unzipped it and reached inside and pulled out a very mean-looking TEC-9 machine gun with a short barrel wrapped in an air cooler. “You’re free to go,” Neill said, which was code that night for “Gun!” The officer nearest the driver grabbed his wrists and handcuffed them behind his back. You never let a suspect know in plain language that you’ve found a gun, Neill said, because he may have another one and be tempted to use it. On the Power Shift, “Let’s get a cup of coffee” or “I need a smoke” can mean “I’ve found a gun.”
    So, I said, legally the guy didn’t have to stop when you asked him if that was his car, right? Right, Neill said. And he didn’t have to walk back to his car, right? Right, Neill answered. And he certainly didn’t have to unlock the door, open it, and pick up the cup, right? Right, Neill said, and quipped, “He could have done better.” There was the slight smile and twinkle of a man who had just won a little contest.
    In the end, though, the assistant U.S. attorney refused to “paper the case,” as they say around the station house, because the vehicle search seemed vulnerable to challenge by the defense. Neill might have gone beyond the “plain view” limit by standing on tiptoes to gaze through the windshield and spot the crack cocaine. He was philosophical. There was one less gun on the street—his unit had confiscated ninety-three in the last eight months—and besides, characters like this always make more mistakes. “We’ll get him next time,” Neill said.
    The rest of the night was anticlimactic but still instructive. On Twenty-first Street NE, we stopped face-to-face with a car containing four young black men, a couple of them wearing their hair in cornrows. Neill seemed to think he’d hit a gold mine. He got everybody out of the car, patted them all down, had them sit on the curb, and searched the car. Nothing. Neill reached out his hand to help all of them up, one by one. He thought theselittle nice-guy gestures eased the humiliation, but the glum, angry expressions on his victims’ faces rarely changed.
    One fellow, though, grinned as the cops walked to their cars and called after them, “Anybody need some tile work done? I do tile work.” He was shining his badge of honor.
    On Twenty-fourth and E Streets NE, a Cadillac and a Lincoln pulled over and parked as soon as the squad car came into view, a standard maneuver to minimize the chance of getting nabbed for a moving violation. Neill took a lone man from the Lincoln; other officers got a woman out from behind the wheel of the Cadillac. The cops searched inside the passenger compartments, then asked for the keys and opened the trunks, which were full of bags and backpacks. The officers pushed their meaty hands around inside the bags and found nothing criminal.
    The faces of the two drivers were an artist’s challenge: a mixture of sorrow, fear, smoldering anger. I wondered if these policemen ever thought about the fact that a lot of the people they hassled were going to end up on juries. The country that these citizens live in is not the kind of country that I would want to live in. But then, I wouldn’t want to live in a neighborhood crawling with armed drug dealers, either.
    “There’s all kinds of illegal shit on that car,”