Fla. Police Accused of Searching Jaywalkers For Drugs

Jan. 7, 2012
Fort Lauderdale, Fla., police stop pedestrians for not using a sidewalk, even where no sidewalk exists, so they can search for drugs, defense lawyers say.

Fort Lauderdale, Fla., police stop pedestrians for not using a sidewalk, even where no sidewalk exists, so they can search for drugs, defense lawyers say.

Lawyers for the Broward Public Defender's Office say Fort Lauderdale officers are using the traffic infraction -- failing to use a sidewalk or crosswalk where one is provided -- to stop people and in some cases cite them for not using sidewalks on streets that have none, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported.

The practice is used mostly in the city's low-income and minority neighborhoods, defense lawyers say.

"We call it 'driving while black' or in this case, 'walking while black,'" Public Defender Howard Finkelstein said. "There are two standards of criminal justice in Broward County: what the rest of us experience with law enforcement and what those in poor, predominantly minority neighborhoods often experience."

Many South Florida neighborhoods lack sidewalks or have ones that stop and start.

Some criminal cases, including drug possession charges, related to such stops have been dismissed by judges and prosecutors after investigators from the Public Defender's Office began photographing areas where arrests happened to prove no sidewalk existed, meaning there had been no legal reason to stop a person.

Lt. Frank Sousa, a Fort Lauderdale police spokesman, said officers rely on whatever laws they can to reduce crime and make communities safer.

"If you dig in the [statute] book, there's a law for everything. If an officer uses a certain law to achieve an objective, does that make it pretextual?" Sousa asked.

Copyright 2012 U.P.I.All Rights Reserved

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