"The Return of Al Jolson": article draft by Roosevelt Fitzgerald

THE RETURN OF AL JOLSON BY ROOSEVELT FITZGERALD
I didn't see it but I wish I had. I'm referring to a recent television report concerning a drug bust in a black neighborhood. From the accounts which have come to my attention, efforts are continuing at a creative pace to rid us of drug pushers and users.
I've never written on this subject before and, believe me, I'm no expert. Somehow or other, thank goodness, I missed any chances to become involved with drugs. I don't know how it is grown, manufactured or ingested. Actually, about the only thing I know is it is helping make us an endangered species. It is killing a good number of us, causing us to kill ourselves and each other and a good many of those who manage to survive those are ending up in the pen. I don't know if its suicide or what but I do know it is causing a lot of people a lot of grief and a lot of others a lot of joy. I can figure out which is which and I'm certain that you can too.
Back to that news broadcast. Seems that Metro or somebody carried on an undercover operation to crack down on drugs. This is how it went, as I understand it. Two white drug enforcement officers applied dark makeup to their skins and posed as a black couple. While so disguised, they infiltrated the black drug underworld and conversed with buyers or sellers or both. After having made contact with quite a number of suspects, they and other officers began snatching the suspects off the streets as though they were being "beamed up" by a transformer on the Starship Enterprise.
I don't know how many suspects were arrested. Those who informed me of the events seem to have lost track of the ocount with their fascination with the method by which the arrests were made.
Some of my informants were outraged. One young lady kept repeating: "When I saw them in blackface it made me so mad--it made me so mad--it made me so mad. Someone else couched their comment in a question: "Mr. Fitz., do you think it
was right for them to put paint on their faces like minstrels and go over there
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and do what they did? Looked like they were making fun of us Mr. Fitz. It just didn't look right." Someone else thought the whole thing smacks, no pun intended, of racism. Someone else thought it was cool. One young man said; "anything to get the friggin drugs off the street." The first young lady was still saying; "It made me so mad."
After all was said and done, it came down to each wanting to know what I thought about it. Quite often, if not always, that is what it comes down to. There are some few who listen to what I have to say. While not a public figure, I am involved with the public and must always be conscious of the individual self and the, shall we say, "semi-public self."
There is always cause to be ever alert to the manifestation of racism in our society. We must, however, recognize certain realities whether we like them or not. The "dopers" among us have put us all at risk. We, who are law abiding, find ourselves, from time to time, suffering the indignities of being stopped and searched and, even when properly done, that is demeaning.
We all pay in some form or fashion for the presence of drugs in our neighborhood. It is easy for some to say; "I don't mind being stopped or searched. I've nothing to hide." Under normal circumstances such a stance would be strongly recommended. After all, what difference does a few minutes make? When the circumstances surrounding such behavior by Metro is suspect, then we must be concerned. We must rid ourselves of the spectre of racism so that it can no longer intefere with our interpretation of the behavior of the justice system.
To date, that is all but impossible. Usually when we see the great majority of media coverage of drug activity it has to do with black people. We see where every black person in a place is sprawled on the floor, put in the position, spoken to in very humiliating terms, searched, embarrassed, taken down town and their faces are clearly shown on the television screens
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for all to see. On those rare occasions when the suspects are white, efforts are taken to conceal their identities because, after all, even though they might have been apprehended with some contraband in their possession, they are innocent until proven otherwise and the burden of such proof is upon the justice system. In the case of black people, no such assumptions of innocence is presented. Seemingly, blacks suspects are guilty and the burden of proof of their innocence is upon them and if their reputations, in the meantime, are ruined in any way, the system seem to be saying that black people do not have reputations anyway.
Those matters are not the center of my attention at this time. I am both amused and bemused at the event as it developed--you remember--the two officers who posed as a black couple. I suspect that the approach might well have been used previously to that televised. Not wishing to second guess the intentions of Metro in carrying out the exercise, I will center my personal reaction and response to that which seems to have been overlooked--at least by those with whom I've conversed on the subject. These comments are centered around a pivotal question; "Why was it necessary to disguise white officers as black people in order to inflitrate the traffiking ing drugs taking place in that neighborhood?
Metro has several hundred police personnel. Blacks make up a very small percentage of the police department. Apparently there are so few that they are generally known to everyone especially those they might need to carry on such undercover work with. Not being able to locate from the standing personnel numbers black officers who are sufficiently unknown, it has become necessary to disguise white officers. Were there two or three hundred black officers, a good percentage of them could be ommitted from the rotation which might place them in normal patrol of certain areas.
In my mind, the outstanding revelation of this entire episode is centered in the fact that there are insufficient black officers along with other minority
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officers. Further, by manifesting the notion that only black people frequent or live on the "westside" is a clear statement of the perception of the demographics of that community.
I am always pleased to see anyone involved in drugs take the fall. On this subject I have a Steve McGarrett mentality—whoever it is, I believe we should say; "Book him/her Dano" and that we should do it city-wide with as much enthusiasm and media exposure as that found on the "westside" so as to dispel the notion, held by many, that law enforcement pursue such criminals more diligently in one area of town than in another.
I wonder if anyone has ever thought od disguising black policemen as white people in order to carry out an undercover assignment in any other part of the valley. I wonder, too, just how spaced out or money hungry anyone could be who would not recognize a white person masqueraded as a black person. If the pushers and buyers are that far gone, maybe we ought to be more thankful than we might ordinarily be to get them out of our midst.
As "good" as Al Joi son was, I can't imagine anyone not realizing that
he was a white man in black face.