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American Morning

Interview with James M. Baker, Theo Gregory

Aired August 27, 2002 - 07:31   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: We want to get to Wilmington, Delaware right now. Life is imitating art, at least in law enforcement anyway. Taking a page from the movie "Minority Report," police there are trying to lower crime rates by identifying potential criminals before they break the law.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM CRUISE: I'm placing you under arrest for the future murder of Sarah Marks (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Give the man his hat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: So-called jump out squads snap photos of people who might commit crimes even if they haven't yet. The photos are taken in high crime neighborhoods mostly. A policy causing more than just a bit of controversy in the first state of Delaware.

Let's talk about the policy. Wilmington City Councilman Theo Gregory is with us this morning, and the mayor, too, James M. Baker.

Good morning, gentlemen.

Good to have you with us today.

MAYOR JAMES M. BAKER (D), WILMINGTON, DELAWARE: Good morning.

THEO GREGORY (D), WILMINGTON CITY COUNCILMAN: Good morning.

HEMMER: Mayor, I guess when I heard about it first, I thought it was a bit wacky, to be quite frank with you. Sell me on it. Why do you like it?

BAKER: Well, first of all, you have it all screwed up. That's not what we're doing. What we're...

HEMMER: All right, straighten me out then.

BAKER: All right. What we're doing is we have surveillance of high drug activity areas throughout the city. And when those surveillances are complete, then there is a move in by the police to arrest the perpetrators who are dealing in drugs.

HEMMER: So you're saying this is not a random stop, then. This is a... BAKER: It is not a -- that's against the law. We don't random stop. They are specifically targeted towards the open air drug trade activities within our city. And that there are people who are arrested for various violations. We have arrested 471 people out of 588 that were stopped. A hundred and seventeen were taken pictures of, but released. Those persons, 92 accompanied the people to that location where the drug activity was going on that were arrested.

So there's a lot of -- these are not good people. These are not little innocent people walking down the street that the police stop and say hey, let us take a picture of you because you might take, do a crime.

The other thing is I don't know if people ever realize that, you know, everybody's not stupid. If we were really going to do that for the future, why don't we take DNA, why don't we take pictures, why don't we even go take a picture of their home, their car or their children, and everything else. That doesn't make any sense. And plus it violates the fourth amendment. And we didn't violate any laws.

HEMMER: Mayor, go back to those, the number charged you say. How many convictions out of that number?

BAKER: Well, I can't tell you how many convictions because there's about 1,000 charges against the 471 people. They have to go before the judge. We don't determine their innocence or guilt. We determine whether or not there's probable cause for arrest or suspicion of activity of a crime where they are aiding or abetting or a part of it.

And then if they, once they do the investigation on the site where they're having the check of the people engaged in these activities, then the police have discretion to determine whether or not to keep a person and file charges or not. They have the right to detain for two hours. Once you are detained, they have the right to take your photograph. That's the law.

HEMMER: All right, I want to get the councilman on this. Theo Gregory, it appears, the way the mayor lays it out, that it's been quite effective. You have a problem with it, though. Tell us what.

GREGORY: I don't think whether it's effective or not is the issue. The issue is whether or not we're within the constitutional standards. Let me say this, that this mayor inherited a city that does have its pockets of crime and I applaud his efforts in trying to resolve the crime issue in our city and it's a great city.

However, we cannot violate the constitution in doing so. The constitution is very clear, in order to stop someone with -- for an investigatory purposes, you must have reasonable grounds to do so. In this case, you do have some folk who are targeted and there's reasonable grounds. However, some innocent folk are caught up in that network when they go into these communities.

There are two statistics as I've heard. I've heard one statistic on the high end of 200 people who were photographed but not arrested and let go. And they obviously weren't doing anything. There was another statistic that one in 17 folk.

My view on the constitution is that one, if this process causes one person's constitutional rights to be violated, it's wrong. And here we're talking about one in 17 to 200 people.

HEMMER: Councilman, based on the research I've done for this story, I'm under the impression that state attorneys and city attorneys have basically said you can't stop it right now because it, indeed, does fit the rule of the law. Given that, is there any recourse?

GREGORY: Oh, they're wrong. What you have, it's a law professor. You have a university professor who said this, the attorney general of the state of Delaware. Two prominent defense attorneys in our state have indicated that they agree with my position and ultimately the Supreme Court's going to decide it.

I believe that the constitution is being violated in this situation and it should not be, the fact that it's effective -- and I agree that it does have some effectiveness. But the in...

HEMMER: You would agree with that, then?

GREGORY: Yes, but the institution called the constitution is much more important than trying to deal with this individual problem. When we're dead and gone, generations after us have to live under the constitution and I don't want it watered down.

HEMMER: Mayor, what about that? Does he have a point there about violating the constitutional...

BAKER: That's bull. That's pure...

HEMMER: ... rights of the people who live in your city?

BAKER: That's pure fiction. That's pure fiction and bull. There's no constitutional violation of these people. They are suspects of an activity. These people could be carrying information. They could be watches. They could be carriers of drugs. They could do all kinds of things when people go in to make arrests.

GREGORY: Yes, but that's a hunch.

BAKER: That's still...

GREGORY: It can't be a hunch.

BAKER: That's still a suspicion of activity...

GREGORY: No. No.

BAKER: ... that's criminal and you have the right under the law and the constitution to do so. You have the right under the Delaware state law and the constitution, under the suspicion of a crime taking place that you can ask questions, stop people under those kind of standards. That is not a violation. If you are just stopping people walking down the street or gathering on a corner, then you have a different kind of set of problems. If you arrest these people for loitering, that's one thing. But you could possibly do that.

GREGORY: May I...

BAKER: To say that these people have not done anything is ludicrous because that's not true.

HEMMER: Councilman, Gregory, you sure may. Go ahead.

GREGORY: Thank you very much. We have a law, 11 Delaware Code Section 1902 which codified, "Terry vote. Ohio," and it states what a police officer can do when he or she finds that there's reasonable grounds to approach someone. You can ask their name, their business abroad, where they live and where they're coming from and where they're going to. You can ask for identification.

If you're not satisfied with any of that, your next step would be to take them downtown. You can hold them for two hours. In that scenario we do not take fingerprints, there's no arrest and we do not take mug shots.

However, now we have this practice on the street where when we stop individuals, we decide oh, you were in a part of this criminal activity, we're going to take your Polaroid and take you downtown.

There are two issues here that violate the constitution. One, there's not reasonable grounds to collectively collect all these people up where there's no evidence that they're involved in a crime.

HEMMER: Make it quick.

GREGORY: And secondly, it goes beyond "Terry vote. Ohio" to take photographs of people on the street.

BAKER: No it doesn't.

HEMMER: All right, gentlemen, listen, we're out of time. I wish we had more because it's a topic we could go on for quite a bit here.

BAKER: Thank you.

HEMMER: The mayor, thanks to you, James Baker. The councilman, Theo Gregory, in Wilmington, Delaware. Many thanks, men. Appreciate it.

BAKER: Thank you.

GREGORY: Thank you.

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