Officer's candor is ugly -- but revealing

OFFICER PAUL Hoke of the Baltimore County Police Department: a virulent racist, or simply an idiot?

Hoke got his 15 minutes of fame - and then some - last week. OK, so it was more like 15 minutes of infamy. But he got it, nonetheless.

What did the trick for him was an e-mail he posted on the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 4 Web site in which Hoke expounded on his feelings about Baltimore's criminals and juries. Paraphrasing the man simply would not do him justice, so here are his remarks, reprinted from Sun reporter Tim Craig's article of Feb. 1:

"The real problem is that these scum have a right to a jury of their peers," Hoke wrote. "When their peers are just as sleazy, scummy and dirty as the defendants what else can we expect? If these jurors put these defendants where they belong (jail, gas chamber, etc.) then who would be there to get their heroin, get them pregnant by age 14 or go on welfare with? My theory: Wall off a certain portion of the city, and let 'em kill each other."

As if that weren't already a mouthful, Hoke felt compelled to go further. Baltimore police, he opined, were "animal tamers" and the city itself a "jungle."

When Hoke's statement - similar ones can be found on any Ku Klux Klan or skinhead Web site - became public, the proverbial grits hit the fan. Some black Baltimore County officers expressed outrage. County chief of police Terrence Sheridan had his internal affairs department investigate Hoke's outburst to determine if it is protected speech. Hoke will be evaluated, Sheridan said, to see if he has any bias and is able to perform his job impartially.

Some have called for Hoke to be fired. Not nearly as many as the ones who went ballistic when Baltimore housing commissioner Paul Graziano uttered the dreaded anti-gay "F" word in a bar, but quite a few.

Hoke should keep his job, for the same reasons Graziano keeps his: Public officials should be canned for what they do on the job, not what they say off it.

Still, Hoke's continued employment with Baltimore County police presents a problem. Should I and other black city residents feel secure driving through Towson or Hillendale - where Hoke patrols - with this man on the street?

"I don't think you should be [concerned]," Sheridan said in an interview. "He's not on the streets now. He's been assigned to inside work at the precinct."

What about Hoke's credibility? Won't defense lawyers - as noted Baltimore lawyer A. Dwight Pettit said last week - use his comments against him?

"It could be a problem for Officer Hoke," Sheridan conceded. "Any of us as law enforcement officers have to be careful what we say. Mr. Pettit expressed using a tactic defense attorneys regularly use."

Hoke, in his defense, said he was expressing his frustration at the recent acquittal of Eric Stennett, who was found not guilty by a Circuit Court jury of the murder of Officer Kevon Gavin. He is, he contends, not a racist.

Bill Toohey, a spokesman for the Baltimore County police department, concurred. "He married a woman who brought with her to their marriage two kids whose father is a black man," Toohey said. "He has two biracial stepchildren."

Some might see that as proof positive that Hoke isn't a racist. Others might simply say, "My God! Those poor kids!"

So should Sheridan - a police chief who runs a whistle-clean department and who has little patience with foolishness or misconduct - fire Hoke? What should be done with a cop who, while not mentioning one word about race, still delivered a racist diatribe against Baltimore's black citizens?

And let's be candid. Everybody knows what Hoke was talking about. Folks who feel the same way just let him say it and take the heat for it. But there is a racial - indeed racist - tinge to the latest hue and cry to abolish the jury system.

Let's just look at some cases where people accepted without question a jury verdict and some where they went apoplectic after an acquittal.

When four white Los Angeles cops were acquitted in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, no one called for repealing the Sixth Amendment. Ditto for the four white cops acquitted of murdering Amadou Diallo, an African immigrant in New York.

In fact, those verdicts were hailed as examples of how the American justice system works.

Even in the more notorious cases of Southern injustice in the civil rights era - the acquittals of the alleged killers of Emmett Till in 1955, Medgar Evers in 1963, Viola Liuzzo in 1965 - did anyone call for abolishing the jury system?

But in the Stennett case, the case of David Terry - accused of killing a white dental student here in Baltimore - and the O.J. Simpson case, we hear how the juries were too ignorant or stupid to be trusted with handling such matters.

What's the difference? The suspects in all these cases were black, and the juries predominantly black.

So what do we do with Officer Paul Hoke of the Baltimore County Police Department?

Pin a medal on him, for candor, and for bringing to light a festering, sickening racism all of us know lingers just beneath the surface, but few of us want to acknowledge.

Related topic galleries: O.J. Simpson, Racism, Murder, Law Enforcement, Civil Rights, Emmett Till, Lawyers

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