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Racial debate swirls around indictments
By WILLIAM BUNCH
bunchw@phillynews.com
WHEN THE NAACP decided to bring its 95th annual convention to Philadelphia, it was July 2000, and they had no way of knowing how ironic that pick would look four years later.
No one knew that the city and Mayor Street - who'd just started as Philadelphia's second black mayor that summer - would be roiled by the FBI planting an electronic bug inside his office.
And no one anticipated the simmering debate over race, po
itics and justice here - which boiled over again just two weeks ago with the indictment of 12 people, including one of the city's most powerful black attorneys.
What better site for the NAACP and
its evolving quest for racial justice? The case shows how the equal-rig
hts group has morphed from the morally clear fight against (speedy and public trials by impartial juries) to the murkier questions that plague Philly. Are black pols and lawyers being targeted for the same practices that whites have been getting away with for years?
Seven of 12 people indicted last month in a so-called "pay-to-play" scam of awarding city contracts are black. The African-Americans charged include lawyer Ronald A. White, ex-city treasurer Corey Kemp, their girlfriends and Kemp's minister. Four white men - all bankers or bond dealers - were also indicted. One of the men charged, a church aide, is Latino.
White - at the center of the government's case so far - went as far to suggest that whit
e prosecutors had a "cultural misunderstanding" of how African-Americans do business.
He said outside his arraignment that prosecutors took a phrase like "my boy," a "ter
m of affection" in the African-American community that he used to describe his friendship with the younger Kemp, and "tur
ned it into something else."
Indeed, longtime observers of Philadelphia politics note that White started gaining influence - especially in the lucrative area of airport concessions - during the 1990s, when the mayor was a white man - Ed Rendell, now governor.
So why did the feds suddenly start probing White and his City Hall ties after an African-American assumed the reins of city government?
Government agents and prosecutors - who've charged a total of 18 people, 13 of them black, on corruption charges and expect more indictments to come - are offended by the questions.
"This is not a story of an election hijacked by rogue FBI agents, but r
ather of an electoral process hijacked by Mayor John Street's private attorney, through official corruption at the highest levels of city government, supported by a cast of characters driven by
greed and avarice," said Jeff Lampinski, who headed the FBI in Philadelphia.
True, the probe began in 2001, not long after control of the Justice Department
flipped from the Democratic-led Clinton administration to appointees of President Bush. But agents insist that's because a wiretap in an ongoing drug probe led to a politically connected Muslim cleric - who hasn't been charged yet - which in turn led them to White and the other players in the case.
However, some impartial observers say the questions abour race are fair - and they blast the federal government itself for not doing more to release data that could resolve the issue.
"They can monitor racial profiling in traffic stops," yet don't study whether there's racial profiling of politicians, said Kenneth M
eier, a Texas A&M political scientist. "The federal government should apply its own rules to its own house."
Two separate academic studies - one by the United Council of Chu
rches and the other by Texas A&M researchers - found that during the late 1970s and through much of the 1980s, black elected officials were more likely to be prosecuted than their white counterparts.
But Meier
said a later study found that prosecutions of black political leaders waned in the 1990s, while George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton were in the White House. He said it seems that political party is now more of a factor than race.
In Philadelphia's black community, many voters who rallied behind Street last November say they don't need a study to tell them what they've known instinctively for years.
Indeed, the revelations in recent years of the bugging and hounding of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI created a high level of cynicism.
That
government mistrust has only grown over the years. Black voters have seen how far agents went to ensnare Washington mayor Marion Barry on drug charges, as well as high-profile investigations
of Detroit's Coleman Young, San Francisco's Willie Brown and Birmingham's Richard Arrington, in which the mayors were never charged.
So far, the defendants in the Philadelphia case have appealed to that history.
The Rev. Frank McCrac
ken - who allegedly committed bank fraud with Kemp - told the Inquirer that the case was brought by "the government that persecuted Martin Luther King... This is the government that allowed blacks to be enslaved. This is the government that allowed my ancestors to be raped. This is not new."
But with criminal charges spelled out in black and white in a 150-page indictment, not all African-American leaders here agree that the case is driven by skin color.
"I don't believe race was a prime factor," said the local NAACP chief J. Wyat
t Mondesire, even though he says he believes that skin color has driven Justice Department probes in the past - including one in the early 1990s of his former boss, then-U.S. Rep. Bill Gr
ay, who was not charged.
"All those who raised the issue of partisanship and race have been proven wrong," agreed Michael Smerconish, a top-rated local talk-radio host who is white and had worked for the administration of former President George H.W. Bush.
He noted the connection
to the drug probe and that the investigation began long before anyone knew the bugging would be a factor in the mayoral race.
Also, most of the high-profile political corruption probes making headlines across the nation these days - the indictment of ex-Illinois Gov. George Ryan and a probe of New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey - involve white-run administrations.
In the end, the verdict on whether the prosecution is racially based will be decided not by pundits by the only place it can be: By 12 everyday men and wome
n, some white and some black, sitting inside a jury box in Philadelphia.
Racial debate swirls around indictments
By WILLIAM BUNCH
bunchw@phillynews.com
WHEN THE NAACP decided to bring its 95th annual convention to Philadelphia, it was July 2000, and they had no way of knowing how ironic that pick would look four years later.
No one knew that the city and Mayor Street - who'd just started as Philadelphia's second black mayor that summer - would be roiled by the FBI planting an electronic bug inside his office.
And no one anticipated the simmering debate over race, po
itics and justice here - which boiled over again just two weeks ago with the indictment of 12 people, including one of the city's most powerful black attorneys.
What better site for the NAACP and
its evolving quest for racial justice? The case shows how the equal-rig
hts group has morphed from the morally clear fight against (speedy and public trials by impartial juries) to the murkier questions that plague Philly. Are black pols and lawyers being targeted for the same practices that whites have been getting away with for years?
Seven of 12 people indicted last month in a so-called "pay-to-play" scam of awarding city contracts are black. The African-Americans charged include lawyer Ronald A. White, ex-city treasurer Corey Kemp, their girlfriends and Kemp's minister. Four white men - all bankers or bond dealers - were also indicted. One of the men charged, a church aide, is Latino.
White - at the center of the government's case so far - went as far to suggest that whit
e prosecutors had a "cultural misunderstanding" of how African-Americans do business.
He said outside his arraignment that prosecutors took a phrase like "my boy," a "ter
m of affection" in the African-American community that he used to describe his friendship with the younger Kemp, and "tur
ned it into something else."
Indeed, longtime observers of Philadelphia politics note that White started gaining influence - especially in the lucrative area of airport concessions - during the 1990s, when the mayor was a white man - Ed Rendell, now governor.
So why did the feds suddenly start probing White and his City Hall ties after an African-American assumed the reins of city government?
Government agents and prosecutors - who've charged a total of 18 people, 13 of them black, on corruption charges and expect more indictments to come - are offended by the questions.
"This is not a story of an election hijacked by rogue FBI agents, but r
ather of an electoral process hijacked by Mayor John Street's private attorney, through official corruption at the highest levels of city government, supported by a cast of characters driven by
greed and avarice," said Jeff Lampinski, who headed the FBI in Philadelphia.
True, the probe began in 2001, not long after control of the Justice Department
flipped from the Democratic-led Clinton administration to appointees of President Bush. But agents insist that's because a wiretap in an ongoing drug probe led to a politically connected Muslim cleric - who hasn't been charged yet - which in turn led them to White and the other players in the case.
However, some impartial observers say the questions abour race are fair - and they blast the federal government itself for not doing more to release data that could resolve the issue.
"They can monitor racial profiling in traffic stops," yet don't study whether there's racial profiling of politicians, said Kenneth M
eier, a Texas A&M political scientist. "The federal government should apply its own rules to its own house."
Two separate academic studies - one by the United Council of Chu
rches and the other by Texas A&M researchers - found that during the late 1970s and through much of the 1980s, black elected officials were more likely to be prosecuted than their white counterparts.
But Meier
said a later study found that prosecutions of black political leaders waned in the 1990s, while George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton were in the White House. He said it seems that political party is now more of a factor than race.
In Philadelphia's black community, many voters who rallied behind Street last November say they don't need a study to tell them what they've known instinctively for years.
Indeed, the revelations in recent years of the bugging and hounding of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI created a high level of cynicism.
That
government mistrust has only grown over the years. Black voters have seen how far agents went to ensnare Washington mayor Marion Barry on drug charges, as well as high-profile investigations
of Detroit's Coleman Young, San Francisco's Willie Brown and Birmingham's Richard Arrington, in which the mayors were never charged.
So far, the defendants in the Philadelphia case have appealed to that history.
The Rev. Frank McCrac
ken - who allegedly committed bank fraud with Kemp - told the Inquirer that the case was brought by "the government that persecuted Martin Luther King... This is the government that allowed blacks to be enslaved. This is the government that allowed my ancestors to be raped. This is not new."
But with criminal charges spelled out in black and white in a 150-page indictment, not all African-American leaders here agree that the case is driven by skin color.
"I don't believe race was a prime factor," said the local NAACP chief J. Wyat
t Mondesire, even though he says he believes that skin color has driven Justice Department probes in the past - including one in the early 1990s of his former boss, then-U.S. Rep. Bill Gr
ay, who was not charged.
"All those who raised the issue of partisanship and race have been proven wrong," agreed Michael Smerconish, a top-rated local talk-radio host who is white and had worked for the administration of former President George H.W. Bush.
He noted the connection
to the drug probe and that the investigation began long before anyone knew the bugging would be a factor in the mayoral race.
Also, most of the high-profile political corruption probes making headlines across the nation these days - the indictment of ex-Illinois Gov. George Ryan and a probe of New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey - involve white-run administrations.
In the end, the verdict on whether the prosecution is racially based will be decided not by pundits by the only place it can be: By 12 everyday men and wome
n, some white and some black, sitting inside a jury box in Philadelphia.