Shadow Vigilantes

by Paul H. Robinson

  The self-described “lynch mob,” however, has some local officials and national commentators worried. They fear the city's problem with drugs and violence will only escalate with the vigilante action. The criminals may use the community attacks as a justification for retaliation. Other officials argue that the residents who rationalize the attacks and the jurors who acquit them hold primitive notions of justice that will not lead to a stable, safe environment. Dr. Mark Moore, a professor at Harvard, put it like this: “We're seeing a shift to public justice, and that's a very scary situation.”44 Instead, the house burnings and mobs will only push the downtrodden communities into anarchy. The communities largely ignore the objections. As one resident explains, “But what are you going to do? We have to be vigilantes.”45

  Clearly, Detroit's house-burning approach creates greater potential for a disaster than MAD's group confrontations in Philadelphia, but the sufferings and dangers as a result of drugs in Detroit seem to be worse. The residents see their actions as one of the only effective means of communicating the seriousness of the problem to authorities. If police and local authorities would actually step in, the mob would no longer be necessary. Because they refuse to step in, however, the neighbors see their actions as necessary and justified to protect their families.

  From the larger societal perspective, it would be better for law enforcement to deal with the crack houses rather than leaving it for the neighborhood to deal with them. An official enforcement action could prevent not only the risks of confrontation but also the encouragement of vigilante action by others inspired by the burnings.

  This Detroit episode shows how desperate a neighborhood can become when the social contract seems broken, but it turns out that things can get even worse. Baltimore's reaction to the drug problem was at times even more extreme than Detroit's.

  BALTIMORE'S BLACK OCTOBER MOVEMENT

  Baltimore is engulfed in a serious drug problem in the 1970s. Authorities do little to fix the rampant violence and drug dealing. Disillusioned with the ineffective official response, some community members decide to fix the problem themselves. Their method: kill the drug dealers.46

  Graffiti appears on inner-city walls heralding the start of the movement: Off the Pusher. Fatal action is urged as the only way to get drugs and their ancillary problems out of the community. A group calling itself Black October forms, dedicated to imperiling the lives of dealers.47

  In 1973 the organization informs the Baltimore Sun that Turk Scott, a freshman member of the Maryland House of Delegates and local heroin trafficker, is to be found in the basement parking lot of his apartment building. “This is Black October,” the anonymous caller tells the reporter working the newspaper's city desk. “Fucking Turk Scott's a gone motherfucker…. He's in the fucking parking garage for Sutton Place. Left something for him.”48

  Delegate Scott has been awaiting trial on eight indictments involving his attempt to sell forty pounds of heroin worth at least $10 million. Police find his body where Black October said it would be. Multiple shooters have shot Scott. Spent shotgun shells, bullet casings, and Black October flyers surround the body. The flyers issue a warning: “These Persons Are Known Drug Dealers. Selling drugs is an act of treason. The penalty for treason is death!!! Black October.”49

  Six days after Scott's murder, members of Black October strike again. A call to the same newspaper directs it to another body. In a similar style to Scott's murder, twenty-two-year-old George Evans is shot to death by Black October members. Authorities find Evans, another local dealer with a criminal record for narcotics offenses dating back over a decade, on the ground in front of his home with one bullet hole in his chest and another in his back. As with Scott, Black October's flyers are strewn around the young man's dead body. This time, the leaflets read, “This person is a known dope dealer. He has made his living off people for a long time. He too has paid the penalty for treason. There is no hope in dope. Off the pusher. Black October.”50

  The group also sends a statement to the same Baltimore newspaper claiming that it will use any means necessary to rid the city of pushers. Black October members express their frustration with the apathy of local police, stating in a letter to the editor, “It is necessary now, after years of depending on corrupt police, to solve our problems by any means necessary or available…. Ninety percent of black-on-black crime is drug related.” The letter concludes, “Dope must go. Save black children. Off the pushers.”51

  The group is quoted in a New York Times article as saying, “The violence we are organizing and using to destroy this Frankenstein monster we feel is necessary and justified.”52

  Fig. 6.3. Black October poster left at crime scene makes clear the group's motivation, 1973.

  The organization follows its initial killings with a manifesto. The statement includes ten “Black Laws” punishable by death. These “laws” prohibit selling drugs to African Americans, raping African American women, killing progressive African American leaders, and working as a police informant against African Americans. The group also argues that, given the authorities’ ineffectiveness, killing drug dealers is the only way to solve Baltimore's drug problem. The murders of Scott and Evans are, in Black October's opinion, necessary for that purpose.

  The authorities’ investigation into the drug dealers’ deaths nets only one member of Black October: Sherman Dobson, a college student with no criminal record and a member of a Baltimore family that is highly involved in the civil rights movement and other community activities. While Dobson awaits trial, the community reaction is mixed. Some are happy someone is doing something to fix the city's drug problem. One commentator praises the organization's action: “It is my opinion that Black October is doing the most beneficial job of combating and eradicating the distribution of drugs into the community.”53

  After the trial and fourteen hours of deliberation, the jury deadlocks on Dobson's murder charge. Instead of murder, the jury settles for a compromise verdict: taxi hijacking. Four weeks before Scott's murder, Black October hijacked a taxi, presumably rehearsing the upcoming crime.

  Baltimore is not alone in this violent response to drug dealing. A social worker in Washington, DC, tells the press that the most effective solution to the drug problem is “killing the pusher.”54 An apparently organized group in New York undertakes a campaign of killing drug pushers, sometimes by throwing them off building rooftops. Ten are killed in a period of eighteen months.

  Clearly, assassinating dealers is a huge step beyond burning crack houses. The practice would seem to violate many if not most of the rules that might morally justify vigilante action. Particularly distressing in the Turk Scott murder is the fact that he was awaiting trial for drug dealing. Apparently, those involved did not trust the courts to deal effectively with the problem, even after they had a large-scale dealer in hand.

  Taken together, these cases show how easily what begins as moral vigilante action slides into immoral action. When morally defensible efforts are ineffective, the next logical step is to do a little more until something does work. If harassing dealers does not stop them, then burning down their place of business seems a logical next step, and if that does not work, then pushing them off a roof or shooting them certainly will.

  Once vigilantes cross the line of lawful conduct, there are few obvious signposts telling them not to go a little further. Unfortunately, it is in the nature of vigilantism that, having left behind the signposts of legality, there inevitably arises the danger of the slippery slope.

  If a vigilante group is careful to stay within the rules of moral conduct, can it say that what it is doing is, in the larger scheme of things, best for society? The answer to that simple question turns out to be a bit complicated. Can something that is moral for the individual actor, given his or her situation, be problematic in its implications for the larger society? And if so, what, if anything, should a society do about the moral vigilante in such a situation?

  THE PROBLEM OF TRAINING AND PROFESSIONA
L NEUTRALITY

  Ranch Rescue

  In the late 1990s American ranchers are struggling to make a living along the Mexican border, especially on the ranches traversed by the avenue of choice for immigrants entering the United States illegally. These ranchers have long complained to the US Border Patrol about its failure to stem the flow of undocumented immigrants. The ranchers feel that their property is under a state approaching siege. Those illegally crossing over are said to regularly kill ranchers’ livestock; pull down their fences, allowing cattle to stray and get injured; steal or damage their trucks and equipment; and break into their houses. Far worse, the easy and unchecked flow across the border invites heavily armed drug smugglers. The drug smugglers are a real threat to the ranchers and their families.1

  Getting no meaningful response to their repeated pleas, several of the ranchers organize Ranch Rescue, an organization that seeks to do what the government refuses to do. Volunteers patrol the border using the same kind of equipment and tactics as the Border Patrol. The group typically detains the trespassers and turns them over to the Border Patrol. By 2006 Ranch Rescue, according to the group's count, has stopped more than twelve thousand illegal entries.2 Other organizations, such as Arizona Guard, are born from this same motivation.

  The members of Ranch Rescue are taking on the job, but they are hardly the best people to perform this role. They do not have the training to screen suspects properly or to detain them most effectively without harm. But even with better training, the members of the group would not be a particularly good substitute for professional law enforcement officers doing their job in an appropriately detached way. The ranchers are the most interested of parties. They are defending their own property and families. And therefore, they are far more likely to have an emotional response to the intruders that one might expect to see in a person defending against personal threats. Mistakes and overreaction seem inevitable in such a situation.

  Roger Barnett, one of the founders of Ranch Rescue, and Casey Nethercott, a member, are both civilly sued by undocumented immigrants for making angry threats and for the use of force while detaining them. Nethercott loses his ranch in the civil lawsuits.

  While the group is effective in reducing illegal entries and successful in dramatizing and humanizing the illegal entry problem—the number of Border Patrol agents is eventually doubled—the loss of Nethercott's ranch was an ignominious end to an action aimed at saving ranches.3 Even if the moral vigilante gets it right in all respects, the vigilante action creates a risk of mistakes that would not exist if that action had been undertaken instead by the fully trained and equipped, unbiased official law enforcement.

  What conclusion should we draw from this? Where does this leave the would-be moral vigilante? Should prospective vigilantes not act, even if they might be morally justified in doing so, because law enforcement officers, if they were willing to put forth the effort, could act more effectively? If that were the conclusion, then even moral vigilantes ought never to act because official law enforcement, with sufficient motivation, can almost always do it better. By that logic, moral vigilantes should defer to the government that has broken its social contract with them simply because that government could have fixed the problem. That analysis seems like a nonstarter on its face. The fact that the government could have done it better only emphasizes the extent of its breach of trust with the citizenry. The government should have done it better but chose not to. That would seem to support, not undermine, the moral vigilante's right to act.

  A better conclusion to the dilemma might be that the risk of error created by the moral vigilante is one more reason why the government should avoid breaching the social contract and should never tolerate situations that would justify moral vigilantism. The government ought to take more seriously its obligation to do justice and to protect citizens.

  Unfortunately, the moral vigilantes’ lack of training and professional detachment is not the only set of problems they create for society.

  THE DISPLACEMENT PROBLEM

  The Crown Heights Maccabees

  In 1964 Crown Heights, New York, is awash in rampant crime and violence. The Hasidic Jewish community is a highly homogeneous group surrounded by cultures and people vastly different from themselves. Crime in their few well-defined blocks and those around them is high and growing quickly. (For religious reasons, the community is tied to the location.) Most crime is committed by persons from outside the immediate neighborhood. Yeshiva students seeking religious training are regularly attacked and robbed. Home invasions have become increasingly frequent, and several have recently turned violent. People fear rapists and muggers to such an extent that many residents have become wary of even walking in the street. Shops begin to close earlier and open later.4

  Fig. 7.1. The Hasidic community in Crown Heights, New York, formed a neighborhood watch group in 1964. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Creative Commons, Diluvi.com, Anna i Adria, CC BY 2.0.)

  Local resident, Rabbi Samuel Schrage, seeks additional police patrols, even using his connections to arrange a meeting with then New York mayor Robert Wagner, but his repeated pleas are ignored. Not satisfied to let the problem go on any longer, Schrage turns to the community. He feels that the Jewish people have a history of self-defense, and he wants the community to step into the void. They will need to take on their own crime problem. Schrage forms the Crown Heights Maccabees, a neighborhood watch group—one of the first of its kind—with four squad cars, a radio network, and other equipment, all funded by the community. The patrols are set up in such a way that no block of the neighborhood is ever without surveillance for more than two minutes. More than one hundred residents volunteer and are given training on how to handle situations that might arise while they are on duty.

  The Maccabees’ goal is to be a deterrent force. A typical exchange follows this pattern: a young man is observed peering into shop windows after hours. He appears to be forming a plan while checking the area. The Maccabee patrol pulls up. No one gets out of the car. The man looks at them, they look at the man, and he leaves the area. Not a word is spoken. Simply watching is not always enough, and while the Maccabees are willing to ask the police for help, it is not always forthcoming. There is no strict hands-off policy, and Maccabee volunteers often end up in confrontations.

  As the Maccabees’ neighborhood watch program becomes known, fewer offenders find it worthwhile to come to the neighborhood to commit crimes. The results are dramatic. From December 1963 to December 1964 crime falls by 90 percent.5 Some cases are instructive as to the power of the deterrence: a serial rapist attacking women in the areas around those patrolled by the Maccabees never attacks within their area.

  The striking success of the Maccabees becomes a problem for their neighbors. Many of the robberies and rapes that are deterred by the Maccabees are simply displaced to the surrounding neighborhoods. The crime rates in the surrounding areas go up as those within the Maccabees’ area go down, producing an ever-growing disparity. The adjacent areas are predominantly African American and Puerto Rican. The crime rate disparity and claims of racial profiling by the Maccabees increase racial tensions, sometimes to the boiling point.

  It could be argued that the surrounding neighborhoods should simply organize the same kind of neighborhood watch that the Maccabees have organized. This argument may seem persuasive if we were to view the world in terms of groups, as many people tend to do—i.e., “us versus them.” But the government's obligation is to each individual, and most individuals living in the higher crime areas are in no position to organize a neighborhood watch program as effectively as that of the Maccabees. The Maccabees are a cohesive group that view living in the area as a religious imperative.

  If the government had taken more seriously its obligation to keep all of its citizens safe, if it had not left the Jews in Crown Heights or the African Americans or the Puerto Ricans or any other group to fend for themselves, it could have avoided the crime disparity and the racial tensions. Only a society-
wide crime-control program can be truly effective, and vigilantes can rarely provide this.

  Where does this leave the moral vigilante? Do the residents of Crown Heights lose their moral justification for vigilante action because it will push the crimes to adjacent neighborhoods? That will strike many people as being seriously unfair: the residents of the neighborhood must suffer because the residents of adjacent neighborhoods are unable or unwilling to organize as effectively? The better solution is for the government to take more seriously its obligation to provide safety and justice. The authorities should avoid ever putting the Jews of Crown Heights, or any other group, in a position where they must take on the role of moral vigilantes.

  Here, then, are two problems inherent in the conduct of moral vigilantes: the risks created by their lack of training and professional detachment, and the risk that their conduct will simply shift the crime elsewhere with no net societal benefit.

  It turns out that moral vigilantism presents other societal problems as well.

  BLURRING THE LINE OF CONDEMNABILITY AND THE PROBLEM OF MINORITY VIEWS

  Once the line of legality is crossed, it is less clear where to stop. What begins as moral vigilantism can easily spill over the moral boundaries as the momentum of the campaign carries a group too far—as evidenced by the community drug wars in chapter 6. But even more problematic than this, vigilante action—particularly action that initially provokes community sympathy—blurs the line of what can and should be condemned. The vigilante action itself, especially when approved by the community, tends to legitimize lawbreaking. What the law makes criminal may no longer be seen as the best guide of what is truly condemnable, and once the legal boundary is no longer seen as the moral boundary, the legal boundary loses its effectiveness and, at the same time, it becomes harder to find the moral boundary.