In our running poll of the D.C. Council's Judiciary Committee members regarding AG Peter Nickles' conduct, we finally reached Councilmember Yvette Alexander.

Nickles has come under fire recently for his office's conduct in a Pershing Park civil suit. District evidence has either been destroyed or lost and discovery continues to be a problem in that case. The discovery process has dragged on for years. The U.S. District Court judge in the case slammed the OAG, ordered Nickles to submit a sworn statement explaining his office's actions, and called on the D.C. Council to investigate the OAG's handling of the case. The issues before Nickles include one very false affidavit.

So far Councilmember Mary Cheh has called for Nickles to resign. Yesterday, Councilmember Phil Mendelson joined Cheh in pushing for Nickles to rejoin the private sector.  Councilmember Jack Evans still fully supports Nickles.

Alexander says she is reserving judgment on Nickles for the time being. She would like to see the council take up the matter. "I wouldn't have a problem with requesting an investigation," she tells City Desk. "You are innocent until proven guilty. I would want to know what happened with the evidence."

If there was purposeful or criminal mishandling of evidence, Alexander says, then Nickles should be ousted.

Alexander says that Nickles still hasn't accepted his role as the attorney general. "I have not seen the distinction in his role as the general counsel and attorney general," she explains. "It troubles me. That was one of my concerns during the confirmation."

*photo courtesy of Alexander's awesome website.

Despite U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s willingness to talk about race in America and his pledge to end racial profiling, his Department of Justice hasn’t done much to dismantle Bush-era guidelines on national security; Those guidelines not only promote racial profiling by the Federal Bureau of Investigation but create justification for state and local law enforcement agents to do it too, the ACLU charges.

"Racial profiling remains a widespread and pervasive problem throughout the U.S., impacting the lives of millions of people in the African American, Asian, Latino, South Asian, Arab and Muslim communities," Chandra Bhatnagar, staff attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program and the main author of the report said in a press release. "The U.S. government must take urgent, direct action to rid the nation of the scourge of racial and ethnic profiling and bring this country into conformity with both the Constitution and international human rights obligations."

The ACLU made the charges in a report to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. To read the press release or the entire report, click here.

In 1996, Holder proposed cracking down on marijuana users and sellers, a policy perspective which was and---assuming he still holds it---is completely antithetical to President-Elect Barack Obama's promise to end federal crackdowns on medical marijuana dispensaries.

What kind of legacy did Holder leave? Evidence abounds that the drug war has done nothing to help D.C.'s crime problem. The MPD are still investigating recent violence in Petworth, but it's likely that the crimes have a drug component, just as they do in Trinidad, Anacostia, on Kennedy Street, and in other parts of the District. Turf wars have become part and parcel of the drug trade, and are a direct result of law enforcement artificially driving up prices for drugs and limiting geographic opportunities for transactions.

The Washington Post on Holder's (failed) drug policies in 1996:

U.S. Attorney Eric H. Holder Jr. said in an interview that he is considering not only prosecuting more marijuana cases but also asking the D.C. Council to enact stiffer penalties for the sale and use of marijuana.

"We have too long taken the view that what we would term to be minor crimes are not important," Holder said, referring to current attitudes toward marijuana use and other offenses such as panhandling.

Now, people arrested in the District and charged with distributing marijuana, even large quantities, face only misdemeanor charges, a standard that has sparked repeated complaints by police officers....

Holder said he hopes to discourage some of that activity by being tougher on marijuana crimes. New guidelines should be in place by the end of the month, he said, noting that the District could learn from New York's "zero-tolerance" policy. There, crime plummeted when police aggressively enforced quality-of-life crimes, including panhandling and public drinking, which gave officers an opportunity to check for drugs, guns and outstanding warrants.

"If you take these so-called minor crimes seriously and treat them fully, it has a ripple effect," Holder said. [h/t to Dave Weigel]

BTW: New York's "zero-tolerance" policy wasn't a reform in any meaningful sense of the word. Instead, it gave the state license to lock away undesirables, of which---by N.Y.'s criteria---D.C. has more than a few.

Anyone care to bet against Holder finding a way to invest more money in the War on Drugs while still fulfilling Obama's promise to end raids on medical marijuana dispensaries? My money says the latter will give them enough political capital to fuck over recreational users across the country.

In a cover story in 1997—the same year Clinton nominated Holder for Dep. Attorney General—City Paper questioned Holder's approach to corruption during his tenure as U.S. Attorney for D.C.

But for all the love Holder has engendered in the community as U.S. Attorney, he has had precious little impact on the city's endemic municipal corruption.

Holder defended himself to reporter Stephanie Mencimer as follows:

"Certainly, the Dirty Dozen occurred while I was here," he says, referring to the 12 police officers caught up in an FBI sting operation in 1993 for bribery and other drug charges. "There was the housing case involving the sale of Section 8 authorizations, and there are other things in my mind that I think about our public corruption section and the work that they've done on the local side. So I'm not sure there's anything we have to apologize for, or try to defend. We've been as vigilant as we've ever been."

Further complications to this appointment include Holder's instrumental role in Clinton's presidential pardon of "billionaire fugitive" Mark Rich, and a June interview with Legal Times in which he said an ascent to A.G. "ain't gonna happen."

Just for good measure, a bit of CP prescience, courtesy of Mencimer:

Even without any big corruption trials, in the final analysis, Holder will get what all the District's U.S. Attorneys get for their trouble here: a better job. Holder's three and a half years in the District have given him wings. He's likely to be flying on to the Justice Department soon, where the albatross around his neck will be replaced by one who looks quite a bit like Bill Clinton. Meanwhile, the District will be left with the same old cadre of crooks, a durable group who know that if they bide their time they can outlast just about any U.S. Attorney.

Photograph courtesy of Covington & Burling LLP