The Green[e]house Effect: a Weblog

Anybody Seen the Fourth Amendment?

Back in my beloved Charlottesville, Kevin Drum reports, the police appear to have gone off the deep end:

DNA TESTING....CNN has a story this morning about Timothy Longo, the police chief of Charlottesville, who has been collecting DNA samples from black men to try and identify a serial rapist:

As of Monday, Longo said, 690 men have been eliminated from the list of possible suspects and 10 have refused to submit to a swab test, in which DNA is collected from a potential suspect's cheek.

One woman in the audience asked if the police would conduct widespread testing of white men if the rapist were white.

"Absolutely," Longo said, adding that he'd do the same if a criminal suspect were Asian or a woman. "I will do them all."

[...] I'm not normally a big fan of slippery slope arguments, but ... mass testing is troublesome. After all, do you think those 10 men in Charlottesville who refused to provide a sample are under increased suspicion now? It would be naive to think otherwise. But should they be?

I spent seven years of my life in Charlottesville, so let me say it straight and plain: this p–––es me off. I hate rape, and refuse to be treated as though suspect of one because I have a high melanin quotient. I have too much pride to bother with this sort of nonsense — and after 31 years of hard work and clean living, I believe I've earned the right to a little respect.

And really, that's beside the point. In the absence of due suspicion, every black man in Charlottesville deserves more respectful treatment than that. Longo can take his test and ... well, use your imagination.

Catherine of Unrequited Narcissism lives in Charlottesville today, and has this to say:

i have no comment on the story, but would rather like to bring light to the world o'crap that is the charlottesville police force. they use excessive force. many of them are racist. very racist (did i mention they once arrested wynton marsalis, who was having an on-campus concert, because they thought he was a robber?). they hate free speech. in my four years at uva, i can't count the number of times a police officer was suspended or fired for inappropriate actions.

so this whole dna-testing thing doesn't surprise me. what i would like to know is if they would do the same thing if some frat boy was accused of rape. would they dna test every white frat boy at uva? seeing as that would take them, oh, about 500 years, i doubt it.

Yeah. So do I.

Posted by Greg Greene at April 14, 2004 9:52 PM