By Robert Cohen-The Washington Post
If it is true that all trends start in California, then the rest of the country had better pay attention. Gray Davis has proposed that his state's police agencies be given the same authority to fight terrorism that Congress recently gave the feds. If this keeps up, there won't be an untapped phone in the nation.
It's not that what Davis proposes is so awful. What he has in mind is a state version of the insultingly named USA Patriot Act, which among other things expanded wiretap authority at the federal level. It also permits the government to monitor e-mail and Internet sites. Uncle Sam is going to know if you've been bad or good -- so be good for goodness' sake.
But you better watch out. Because already other states are asking for the same authority. All this is being done in the name of anti-terrorism, but the expanded powers could be used for any purpose approved by a court -- a state court at that. You need only peer back in history to wonder if we are going to be any safer or, maybe, much worse off.
Here I must state a prejudice. Having once been a statehouse correspondent (Maryland), I am underwhelmed by the competence and professionalism of state government. Most legislators are part-time, but the lobbyists are not. Often, they lead the representatives around by the nose -- offering expertise, advice and, in a pinch, a free vacation to somewhere very nice.
Similarly, state judges do not match the caliber of their federal counterparts. Unlike federal judges, who are appointed for life, state judges usually are elected. Often they are political hacks who, as lawyers, have already plundered the savings of widows and orphans, retire to the bench and stay there by pandering to the electorate. I know there are great state judges and lousy federal ones, but I know, too, that in general that's not the case.
What is true of the judiciary is also true of police departments. I have my problems with the FBI, but nothing it ever did compares to the crimes committed by certain L.A. cops in the Rampart district or, for that matter, the trigger-happy cops of Prince George's County. The combination of lazy or incompetent judges and brutal or corrupt cops ought to give anyone pause.
There is a bit of the potentate in many governors. They consider themselves presidents of their respective states. They have their planes and their cars and security details for a nonexistent threat from no one in particular. A national governors' conference has more guns than a sit-down of Afghan warlords.
So it is not surprising that in the past, various states have mimicked the federal government -- hunting reds, anarchists, syndicalists and, later, integrationists. States, even cities, had their own red squads, persecuting or, on rare occasion, prosecuting alleged subversives or mere dissidents. There was hardly a major city in the country that didn't have some palooka in a fedora following some bookworm in a beret.
At about the same time, various southern states used their police powers to intimidate and harass civil rights activists. It was the police themselves who in 1964 helped lynch three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Miss. That was an extreme example of the misuse of police powers, but it was not a rare one. For African Americans in the South, the difference between the KKK and the cops was sometimes only a matter of uniform.
Yes, I know. That was then and this is now. But even now police power can be awesome if unchecked. The power to tap phones, to accumulate damaging personal information, to track your Internet habits is the stuff of Orwell and Kafka. It was also the stuff of the late Richard Daley of Chicago and the equally late Gov. Ross Barnett of Mississippi. Police power needs to be rationed, to be monitored. It was only yesterday, after all, that a posse of moralists, certain of their cause and blind to the consequences, managed to excavate the hidden sex life of a sitting president, supposedly the most powerful person in the land.
Many of us who are wary of police powers, who cherish civil liberties, nonetheless concede that the law has to accommodate the new threat. But the new authority ought to be limited to the new threat and restricted to the federal government. The last thing we need is 50 FBIs, some of them effectively accountable to no one. Let the feds handle terrorism. That way, we'll all be safer.
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An article in response to this issue:
http://www.nandotimes.com/opinions/story/216632p-2090132c.html