Havre de Grace -- Apparently City Council President Mary Pat Clarke just doesn't get it, which could turn out to be a serious handicap for someone who wants to be mayor of Baltimore.
Mrs. Clarke is supposed to be a smart and politically astute woman. Yet here she is pushing a truly ludicrous proposal to outlaw the sale of bullet-proof vests in her city -- all in the holy name of crime prevention, of course.
To think such a measure would work, you'd have to be obtuse. Mayor Schmoke isn't obtuse, and he's shied away from it. And as Mrs. Clarke isn't considered obtuse either, her support for it must mean that even though she knows it won't work she hopes the public doesn't.
She says the police, through their union, support her bill, and she observes that drug dealers and other criminals use the vests. Well, of course they do, but that doesn't justify this piece of nutcake legislation. It's the sort of thing you'd expect from New York City -- or Moscow, back in the old days when you had to have a license to own a typewriter there.
No doubt Mrs. Clarke, well aware that few Baltimoreans own bullet-proof vests, thought her bill would be politically appealing. But where has the lady been these last few years? If Parris Glendening had come up with an idea as goofy as this in the recent Maryland gubernatorial campaign, he'd now be circulating his resume instead looking at other people's.
No one doubts that drug dealers are among the best customers of those supplying upper-body armor. But is it possible that Mrs. Clarke truly believes they won't be able to secure bullet-proof vests elsewhere, even if the City Council bans such garments in Baltimore?
The council president now proposes simply to ban the sale of these products. But she's perched at the head of a slippery slope. If her bill is enacted, when crime doesn't miraculously go away she'll soon have to take the next step and ban the unauthorized possession and use of the vests, as well as their sale.
Then what happens? It isn't hard to envision the Baltimore vest police hauling liquor-store owners, 7-Eleven clerks and gas-station attendants off to jail for the unauthorized wearing of Kevlar. That should give Mrs. Clarke her 15 minutes of fame on the network news.
Nervous suburbanites who donned protective garments as a precaution when venturing into Baltimore will be stunned to find themselves behind bars, along with ticket scalpers and others determined by the city to be dangers to society.
Plainclothes officers assigned to vest duty will sidle up to suspiciously well-padded individuals on the light rail and poke them surreptitiously in the side with knitting needles. Failure to flinch will suggest the presence of an outlawed undergarment, and be grounds for an immediate search.
Plenty of practical legal problems, as well as constitutional ones, will confront Mrs. Clarke's vest squad. In order to qualify as a bullet-proof vest under the law, will a vest have to be truly bullet-proof, or just be advertised as such? If my new vest will stop a .22 Long Rifle at 50 yards, but not a .30-06 at five, will it still be banned in Baltimore?
Suppose I buy a new plaid waistcoat from a downtown clothier, and on my way home encounter a carjacker who fires a slug from his new Glock 9mm into my chest. But suppose the slug fetches up in the Bible I happen to be carrying in my vest pocket. Would I be prosecuted under the laws of Baltimore for illegal impermeability?
Mrs. Clarke says the police support the idea of banning bullet-proof vests, and who can blame them? If criminals could be deprived of their weapons and their body armor, a policeman's life would be much less dangerous. But just as gun laws do little or nothing to keep guns out of the hands of those who use them illegally, laws restricting the sale or use of bullet-proof vests would be equally ineffective. They can only be enforced against the law-abiding.
It would also make police work safer if criminals weren't allowed to drive fast cars, lock the doors of their houses, or operate cellular telephones while in Baltimore. It would help even more if criminals were required to report to the police whenever they entered the city. So when may we expect some Mary Pat Clarke crime-control legislation in these areas?
If the state and national election results of 1994 meant anything, they meant that people are tired of feel-good, do-nothing laws that clutter the courts, waste the time of the police, and make government look idiotic.
But Mrs. Clarke obviously didn't get that message, or she wouldn't have launched her quixotic attack on the, uh, vested interests of Charm City.
Peter A. Jay is a writer and farmer.