A LITTLE-NOTICED local story last week provided a troubling, if not downright chilling, glimpse into just how far government will go when it feels entitled to strip away civil liberties.
A controversial law enacted nearly a decade ago allows the state to commit “sexual predators” indefinitely, after they have finished their prison sentences, on the premise that they are likely to reoffend. These Special Commitment Center (SCC) inmates essentially face life prison sentences because of crimes they might commit in the future. The only way out is through a strict, yet poorly defined and funded, gauntlet of unproven treatments and therapies designed at the whimsy of the state and its psychologists. Only six SCC inmates have ever been released.
Last week, one of those inmates, Joseph Aqui, was back in the SCC while a judge mulled over whether to recommit him indefinitely. The judge opted to release Aqui back into the community “with very strict conditions.” This process is disturbing enough. But the truly chilling part is why Aqui had his freedom further restricted. He stands accused of two consensual acts of sex and of viewing Internet pornography. This raises the question: When, in the state’s eyes, does normal behavior become criminally deviant?
According to The Seattle Times, prosecutors claimed before the court that “Aqui posed a threat to the community because he was able to engage in sex despite the many conditions of his release.” But isn’t the whole point of returning a prisoner to the community to encourage him (or her) to live a normal, law-abiding life? And isn’t “engaging in sex” normal?
Frankly, I’d be a lot more worried about a convicted rapist if the state tried to stop his body’s hormonal impulses. With rape, after all, it’s not sex that’s the crime—or even the primary motivation. Rape is about power. Consensual sex, or viewing porn, may be distasteful to a prosecutor, but it’s not normally illegal—and it’s no more an indicator of an intent to rape than chopping onions is of a will to stab someone.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of cases like Aqui’s is that nobody cares. He’s a “sexual predator” (as defined by the state); who cares if he has no rights? He’s a creep. But it’s always the least sympathetic characters—the rapists or drug felons like the recently shot Aaron Roberts—whose rights we happily sacrifice first.
The question is, “Who’s next?” If Joseph Aqui can be locked up forever for “crimes” that are either normal acts or never even happened, why can’t you or I? All too often these days, it seems like the Bill of Rights is all that protects us from lawmakers who are either bought off by big money or all too happy to inflict the tyranny of the majority. Slowly, gradually, inexorably, we’re losing that protection. Joseph Aqui is at the front line.
THE CHASM
Speaking of Aaron Roberts, the racial chasm exposed in recent weeks by his death seems to be growing.
According to the police, Roberts was shot in his car by one officer after grabbing another and attempting to flee the scene with the cop hanging out his car window.
Protests have bubbled throughout the Central District since the shooting. Like any other neighborhood, the CD does not speak with one voice. One community group has called for a boycott of Starbucks. Some want to use the boycott to push the need for local, black-owned neighborhood businesses. Others want to use their “understanding” of the CD to nuzzle up to City Hall. Still others are using Roberts’ death to revisit their Mardi Gras-induced racial rage. The boycott has been widely condemned, but it’s only one piece of communitywide outrage over decades of arrogance from the Seattle police and City Hall.
Personally, I think the boycott is a bad idea; a business’ value to a neighborhood should not be judged solely by whether its owners sign off on a political agenda unrelated to its operation. But I hope the controversy over the boycott won’t detract from the desperate need for accountability from the police and City Hall.
Seattle needs to own up. Bigotry— black and white, institutional and individual—is very much a part of this city in 2001. Over the past two weeks, I’ve written that I hoped white Seattle would respond seriously and respectfully to the rage this tragedy has triggered.
I don’t know what happened the night of Roberts’ death, and nobody, other than the witnesses, does. That hasn’t stopped a lot of people from taking the officers’ self-serving stories as gospel truth, and for some, using that and Roberts’ drug problems as a platform for their overt, unapologetic racism; I’ve got the e-mails to prove it. Seattle has a racial divide that it ignores or belittles at its peril, and, so far, that’s exactly what Mayor Paul Schell, City Attorney Mark Sidran, Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, City Council member Jim Compton, and their various enablers and apologists are doing.
How many more police killings of black men will it take for our city to erupt? Let’s not find out.
For more on the Roberts shooting, see “Church Meeting,”, and “Black and Blue.”
