Welcome to the Wilmington, Delaware Department of Precrime.

Wilmington police photo policy under fire: Two Wilmington police squads created in June to arrest street-level drug dealers have taken pictures of at least 200 people who were not arrested for any crimes. The pictures, names and addresses of the people - mostly minority men - are being used to create a database of potential suspects to investigate future crimes, Police Chief Michael Szczerba said. Legal experts and state and federal prosecutors say the tactic is legal. Criminal defense attorneys, the American Civil Liberties Union and minority groups say it is not. [...] Mayor James M. Baker said criticism of the photographing is "asinine and intellectually bankrupt," and he will not stop the practice. "I don't care what anyone but a court of law thinks," he said. "Until a court says otherwise, if I say it's constitutional, it's constitutional."

Unfortunately, Wilmington's policy doesn't seem to be unconstitutional; the Chicago Police Department was last year given federal carte blanche to escape a consent decree and spy up a storm, although they note that now they would never never NEVER do such a thing: Today, Chicago police say they wouldn't consider doing what Wilmington is doing. "We go by past actions and not by what people look like," said Dave Bayless, a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department. Besides, Bayless said, the Chicago police have a system called Citizen Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting, which lets them instantly tap information on more than 4 million arrests dating back 12 years--from the city and 132 suburbs. The photos are of people who have been arrested, but not necessarily ever convicted. (And yes, even I will note that a database of photos of people who have actually been arrested and charged is a qualitatively different thing than a database of photos who have never been accused of a crime.)

Note that the City of Chicago's observance of that previously mentioned consent decree has been markedly lacking. The fun part is, even though the courts of appeal agreed to relax the restrictions of the consent decree, at the time that the city spied on the protesters at the 1996 Democratic National Convention, they were violating the terms of the decree, and should have been found in contempt for that reason alone. Later loosening of the decree should have had no bearing on that case.

In any event, if the federal courts of appeal were citing "terrorist acts" in April 2001 as a reason to allow "intelligence units" to collect information on people who had committed no crimes, then imagine what they would say now. "You want to collect information on the innocent, because they're poor minority men in bad neighborhoods? Go right ahead! In fact, hand 'em over to the feds, who can have them designated enemy combattants, and we'll never have to see them again!"

Apparently, what you look like and where you live now makes you a suspect in this country, even though you haven't ever done anything wrong. Apparently, despite being innocent of any wrongdoing, walking on the street and doing otherwise legal activities now constitutes suspicious behavior.

And people wonder why minority youth are so overwhelmingly hostile toward The System.