Arrest-Proof Yourself (23 page)

They get an attitude and curse and shove cops
outdoors in front of witnesses
.

Remember Uncle Dale’s Golden Rule #1?

IF COPS CAN’T SEE YOU, THEY CAN’T ARREST YOU.

The reverse is also true. Do crimes where cops
can
see you and you
will
get hammered, no matter how rich and white you are.

Do these rich white people suddenly become more criminal in South Beach than they are back in New York and L.A.? Nope. They simply become more clueless and more visible. Back home they do their crimes indoors, where cops can’t
see
the offense,
hear
the women’s screams, or
smell
the dope. If cops are called to a residence, it’s generally gated and secured. There’s time for rich perps to hide or destroy evidence, speed dial their attorneys, calm down, and sober up. There’s time to demand a warrant before allowing a search and to observe Uncle Dale’s Golden Rule #3:

GIVE COPS YOUR NAME AND BASIC INFO, THEN SHUT THE HECK UP!

The point is that behavior, not race, gets people arrested. Being rich, white, and famous doesn’t guarantee that someone isn’t a clueless idiot when it comes to criminal justice. Rich people can be difficult to
prosecute
because they can afford big-time lawyers, but they’re easy to
arrest
—if they’re clueless.

Let’s consider an example everybody knows: football and media star O. J. Simpson, who was accused, and acquitted, of a double homicide. The fact that he’s black was, from a legal standpoint, unimportant. What mattered was his being a savvy multimillionaire. He was easy to arrest, but to prosecute? Fuggedaboudit! He was defended by the best and most expensive attorneys in America. They stomped the prosecutors like so many cockroaches. Here’s a clue: the number of multimillionaire murderers convicted in the last hundred years is practically nil. So, if you’re charged with murder, your best defense against conviction and extermination is to be worth $5 million or more. I’ll need most of that to keep you off the gurney to eternity.

DO WHITE TRASH GET A PASS BECAUSE THEY’RE WHITE?

Let’s talk about a group people of color often know little about: poor, clueless white people. Some black Americans have myths, of course, and think poor whites are bogeymen with white Ku Klux Klan hoods in their pockets, always ready for a nighttime lynching. On their part, some poor Southern whites fly Confederate battle flags at home and on their vehicles to signify a certain disinclination to appreciate the full panoply of America’s racial and ethnic diversity.

I live in a neighborhood where poor whites and poor blacks rent rooms in separate rooming houses on the same blocks. Although on paper the neighborhood is a model of integration, the two groups might as well live on separate planets. Since it’s been my privilege to arrest people of both groups over the years, and now to defend them, I know them well.

Let’s talk about a subset of poor, clueless whites I’ll call seagoing rednecks. These guys live along the rivers, seaports, and coasts of the South in an astounding variety of boats and contraptions that float but, lacking propulsion, may not actually make headway in a liquid medium. Some of these guys actually live in truck containers and plywood boxes that bob about on giant blocks of polyurethane foam.

Most of these guys work in fishing boats, boatyards, and marinas. Some of them supplement their income by running offshore to unload mother ships and bring in drugs. This is sometimes referred to as fishing for “square grouper,” i.e., marijuana bales and blocks of cocaine. In south Florida, if they can afford full tanks of gas for their boat, they cross to Bahamian outer islands to pick up Haitian and Chinese immigrants, who they carry to the beaches of south Florida and dump overboard just beyond the breakers.

They’re fond of the magic herb and can be seen growing their very own shipboard marijuana bushes, which they mist and fertilize lovingly. Nothing, of course, replaces beer. They consider the 24-pack and the kegger to be the most important advances in human convenience in the last century. When in need of jollification, they hie forth to roadhouses and biker bars, where misunderstandings about women sometimes require the intervention of civil authority. When their women are in need of enlightenment, they improve their lady’s understanding with a few sharp raps to the head. Their dress code runs to jeans and T-shirts. Their hair is long or shaved off, their beards scruffy, and their skin adorned with tattoos and piercings.

Got the picture? These are petty criminals, but why aren’t more of them in jail? Because they’re
not totally clueless
. Using the Cluelessness Quotient chart and the Golden Rules for comparison, let’s consider manners first. Although low on the social food chain, these characters don’t have a chip on their shoulders about race. They are less likely to act out in the presence of police. Generally they can stifle the profanity during those crucial minutes and mumble “Yes, officer” and “No officer” until the heat has passed.

Most important, they don’t adopt the outdoor lifestyle. They’re almost never visible walking on streets where they can be seen by cops riding around in cars. When they drive, their cars and pickups may be junkers, but they’re street legal, so they have fewer traffic stops. They get wasted indoors, where search warrants are required, and are less likely to carry dope on their persons and in their cars. Often they grow their own marijuana, so they do not buy drugs and fall victim to police stings, undercover cops, and confidential informants. Their dress is scruffy, but T-shirts and jeans blend in better than gang colors and hip-hop gear, so they don’t get targeted as quickly by police.

Once they do get arrested, they have some resources. For time management, they generally can muster an alarm clock and a watch, and in emergencies, a calendar. They often marry their women, so they have a wife, the “old lady,” in addition to Mama and sisters to pay legal fees and bail bonds. When driving, they get their buzz from beer rather than marijuana. This means that if they’re stopped and are not legally intoxicated, they will receive only a citation for driving with an open container—and not even that if they can slide the can out the rear window and into the truck bed before the cop gets close. Rednecks have some knowledge of police procedure. They know that police do
not
like to find guns, so they carry the all-purpose and legal knife. When they do carry guns, they are likely to have a permit.

ARE BLACK AND HISPANIC AMERICANS MORE CLUELESS?

There are entire libraries devoted to black American social problems, so I’ll limit myself to two observations. First, black Americans have only been able to vote without hindrance since I was a teenager, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Second, black Americans have only begun to hold good jobs and acquire money, real estate, and pristine, street-legal vehicles in significant numbers in the last 20 years. In so doing, they have acquired the armor with which the middle and upper classes gird themselves against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune—insurance policies, pensions, savings accounts, investments, and attorneys. In the terminology of this book, they have become more savvy and less clueless.

Middle- and upper-class black and Hispanic Americans who drive street-legal cars within speed limits; have nice manners; and avoid carrying drugs, unlicensed firearms, or stolen property in their vehicles can go years without any interactions with police, just like white Americans. They still get pulled over more often than they should, but they do
not
get arrested.

Clueless people, regardless of race or income, get busted because they’re
easier
to arrest. They’re low-hanging fruit. To a cop, they represent more points for less work. In a cop’s world the most important person is his sergeant, and sergeants want only one thing—numbers. Sergeants are great communicators. They’re geniuses at crafting pithy sentences in easy-to-understand language. Here’s what my old sergeant in Miami had to say about my performance when I first joined the force. I remember it verbatim 30 years later: “Carson, if you don’t go out there and arrest more of those scumballs, I’ll have your job.”

Now you know all you need to know, perhaps all there is to know, about police sergeants. When the sarge is busting your chops for stats, the simplest solution is to pull over some beat-up cars stuffed with clueless idiots. You’ll get multiple busts fast and soon be back on the sunny side of the guy who hands out assignments and recommends promotions.

STEREOTYPES AND PROFILES—GET USED TO THEM

The following two things make minority Americans insane:

1.
STEREOTYPING

2.
PROFILING

Stereotyping means judging individuals according to preconceived ideas. Profiling means choosing whom to stop, question, and search based on stereotypes. Volumes have been written, and bushels of lawsuits filed, to protest police profiling. Cops, however, are not going to stop profiling for a simple reason: it works. Here’s why. Humans are in the main conformists, not individualists. Petty offenders and most real bad guys dress, act, and behave—surprise—like crooks. Let’s lay out some examples.

Young black and Hispanic men wearing jail tatts (jailhouse tattoos) and gang colors are
more likely
to be arrestable than elderly white guys in suits and ties.

Women wearing miniskirts and carrying tiny “condom” handbags are
more likely
to be prostitutes than women in business suits and flat heels.