I am offended and disgusted by Daniel Grant's response ("Safety without discrimination," April 11) to my Viewpoint last week ("The TCU capitol gang," April 5) that discussed the ACLU's lack of support for a gang ordinance that would serve to protect Tufts' students. I am not sure if Mr. Grant has actually read the ordinance, but if he had, he might see that it does not promote racial profiling. In fact, the ordinance takes several measures to prevent such atrocious acts, and the fact Mr. Grant would "exploit" the salacious and ubiquitous stories of racial profiling in cities like my hometown of New York, is deplorable.
First of all, the ordinance is specifically worded to target only known gang members. Both the gangs and gang members will be identified not by the color of their skin, but by a team comprised of gang experts and officials specifically chosen to guard against racial profiling. This team will include a representative of the Somerville Human Rights Coalition, a member of the Professional Standards Office, an Alderman, a solicitor, and three members of the community, two of whom must be minorities. This is hardly the "three police officers" running gang detail that Mr. Grant irresponsibly reports. These board members will ensure that the police officers do not overstep their bounds or take any actions based on race.
There are further restrictions in the ordinance which seek to prevent racial incidents. The officers who carry out the policies of the ordinance cannot go up to any group of black or Latino or Asian men standing together and tell them to disband. At least one and possibly more of the group must be previously identified as a gang member by teams of experts in charge of gang analysis and prevention. In addition, the ordinance only takes effect in areas that have been identified by the chief of police and his team of experts as gang controlled areas.
This leads to the next refutation of Mr. Grant's disingenuous points. He claims that the ordinance will lead to profiling on or around the Tufts campus. However, as far as I am aware, unless the ACLU is the latest Somerville gang, Tufts is not recognized by the Police as a gang-controlled area. The value of the ordinance for the Tufts community is not removing the gangs that loiter between Tilton and Haskell, but preventing the spread of MS-13 and other "violent criminal gang[s]" (at least Mr. Grant got one thing right) to the area surrounding and comprising the Tufts campus.
Mr. Grant points to the fate of the Chicago gang ordinance as a reason for opposing the Somerville bill of similar nature. However, the Chicago ordinance did not have in place the same safeguards that I have detailed above. There was no panel of minority and community representatives to oversee the implementation, and the only criteria necessary for an officer to disperse a group of loiterers was the belief that one of the group might be a gang member. There was no group of gang experts to identify known members of gangs, and there was no identification of specific gang-controlled areas known to be dangerous and crime-ridden. In effect, the Chicago ordinance was a blind grab, which resulted in the arrest of over 42,000 citizens, most of whom had no gang relations whatsoever.
The Somerville ordinance takes what was good about the Chicago bill, namely the intent to prevent gangs from carrying out their business and the doctrine of pre-emptive action, and gives it the focus and specificity it needs. It also removes the potential for racial profiling that the Chicago version's ambiguity created.
The most atrocious distortion orchestrated in Mr. Grant's article is not his misrepresentation of the ordinance, but the lack of journalistic integrity it shows with the following claim: "Peppiatt [that is me]" he intones, "exploits the horrific rape of two Somerville girls as evidence for the need of the Anti-Gang ordinance." Actually, Mr. Grant, that piece of information and its importance as an example of the danger that MS-13 provides, was also emphasized by Newsweek, whose assertions you admit "no member of the Tufts ACLU or Project REPEAL doubts."
So, next time you try for a bit of journalistic glory at the expense of advocating the endangerment of the Tufts campus, try aiming a little higher; I am sure Newsweek's exploitative reporting is what has kept them in business for the last half-century.
Jonah Peppiatt is a freshman who is majoring in English and political science.
