Presumed guilty: to racist police, innocence is no defence.

• Author: Kennedy, Joseph C.

I have two sons. They attended public and private schools in New York and Washington, studied abroad in London, Rome, and West Africa, and graduated from a highly respected college in the Midwest of the United States. They never caused any trouble at school, at home, or in the streets. They were never on drugs, never involved in rape or carjackings. They "grew up right." Yet both have been arrested, jailed, and criminally charged, and we have heard the words "five to ten years mandatory" and "one to five years minimum."

My sons are black. And their experience has made clear to at least one black family that no black American - regardless of education, profession, wealth, or values - can be shielded from the capriciousness of racism. While Americans were divided over the O.J. Simpson verdict, most were appalled by the Mark Fuhrman tapes and their revelations of racism, manipulation of evidence, and perjury by a member of the Los Angeles Police Department. It would be easy and comforting to believe that Mark Fuhrman's behavior was an aberration, or that such racial biases and behavior toward blacks exist only in large city police departments like Los Angeles or Philadelphia. But as long as racism exists in American society, it will be found even among those sworn to uphold the law - in police departments and in criminal justice systems, in large cities and small towns alike.

I grew up in a small town in southern Ohio where there were few blacks. When I sat with my classmates in a restaurant after school, it was the police who would tell me to get out: "You are not wanted here." At the movies, it was the white policeman who told me to leave my seat and go sit in the back "where Negroes sit." In Texas, it was the white police who beat my brother and me on the head because we spoke of rights for blacks. It was the white police in Arlington, Va., and the District of Columbia who often followed my car, then pulled me over for no reason. So I did not consider the police my friends or protectors. Still, I wasn't prepared for what happened to my sons.

About 11 years ago, the phone rang in my downtown Washington, D.C. office. It was my older son, then 30. "Dad! Guess where I am? I'm at the Arlington County Jail. Some woman told the police she had been robbed by a 'black man with a beard.' She picked my picture out of some pictures. You can get me out with a $500 bond." I posted the money.

My son and I embraced when he was brought out. Although his voice had been calm and matter of fact on the phone, I could see the disbelief and fear in his eyes. I could not disguise the same in mine.

A young policeman told us that my son was charged with the attempted robbery at knifepoint of a white woman at about 8:30 on Wednesday morning at an office building in Ballston. The office paused, then said, "That's mandatory five to ten years. It will help that he turned himself in."

Turned himself in! What was he talking about? The afternoon before, Sunday, a detective with the Arlington County Police Department called asking for our son. I told him he was out but would son the message, we both thought it had to do with a pledge card he had filled out to contribute to the Arlington County Fraternal Order of Police, or with the Arlington Yellow Cab he drove when he wasn't working on his music and video production. Monday morning, on his way to pick up his cab, he stopped by the Arlington County Courthouse. When he met the detective, he was immediately charged and arrested.

About a week earlier, while driving his cab in Arlington, a policeman had given him a ticket for a traffic violation. The police must have been on the lookout for a "black man with a beard." My son fit that description, so the police who gave him the traffic ticket must have phoned in his cab number to the criminal division, which then got his picture from his registered Hack-Taxi license.

My son had to establish where he had been on that Wednesday morning about two weeks earlier. For most people who have regular jobs, the answer would be rather simple, but when my son was not driving the taxi, he generally worked at home, alone. If he were at home on that morning, how could he prove it?

Fortunately, the roster at the Arlington Yellow Cab office showed he had taken out a cab that day starting around 6:00 a.m. As a radio-cab company, drivers respond to calls from a dispatcher who provides the name and address of the passenger to be picked up. If we could get the manifest, maybe it would show where he was that day at 8:30 in the morning.

That afternoon, my son called with jubilation. The manifest showed he had responded to a call at 8:15 in South Arlington. Destination: The Department of Agriculture Building on Independence Avenue in the District. The round trip would take at least a half hour. He could not have been in...