By Tim Redmond
I was arrested once for “Conspiracy to Loiter.”
Think about that, for a second. Try to figure out what that exact crime entails. Then consider that it took place in the Federal Building in San Francisco, and under federal law, conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor can be charged as a felony. So my crime, as it were, could have landed me in a federal pen, serving five years hard time.
I was actually just a reporter, wearing an press pass issued by the SFPD, covering a demonstration that involved some activists chaining themselves to the front door of the Federal Building. Most of the reporters were outside, trying to do interviews as the cops blocked off access to the protesters. So I walked around to the side door, walked into the (public) building and started doing interviews as the chain gang was broken up and taken into custody.
An infuriated member of the Federal Protective Service pointed to me and told his assistant to “arrest that man.” When the younger cop asked what the charge would be, the red-faced officer blurted out “uh, conspiracy to loiter.”
So that’s what went down on the paperwork, and as a suspected felon, I was chained to a radiator in the FPS office while they figured out what to do with me next. It took an hour or two for some U.S. attorney to get involved and realize that there was no such crime as conspiracy to loiter, and if there was I hadn’t committed it, and eventually I was unchained and released. I still had to get a lawyer to get the charge formally dismissed.
All these years later, it’s just a funny story — but if I had been a young person with brown skin who had arrived in the United States with his parents at age two and never attained proper legal status, I could have been deported, to a country I’d never known where I had no ties or connections and might not even speak the language.
That’s one of the problems with deporting people just on the basis of an arrest — sometimes people get arrested by mistake. Sometimes they turn out to be not guilty.
That’s why the Examiner’s front page headline — “Commit a crime, stay in The City” — is so crazy. You don’t have to commit a crime to get arrested. Any young man with black or brown skin in this country knows that.
There’s a reason why people have the right to a preliminary hearing and a trial before they have to pay for a crime. Maybe they didn’t do it.
All that David Campos’ legislation does is move the time when you refer someone for potential deportation (which, frankly, is worse punishment than most of the sentences most people will get for the crimes in question) from the arrest period to the conviction period.
It’s pretty simple, really. And I remain convinced that the only reason Mayor Newsom opposes it is that he’s running for governor and doesn’t want to look soft on crime.