Gov. Paul LePage Monday released the contents of a three-ring binder that he has said backs his claims that most drug traffickers in Maine are black or Hispanic. But the information inside, which was issued in response to Freedom of Access Act requests, doesn’t seem to support those claims.
The binder, or scrapbook, that LePage has been compiling first came to light at one of his town hall meetings in North Berwick last month, as he was talking about Maine’s heroin problem.
“I don’t ask them to come to Maine and sell their poison,” LePage said at the meeting. “But they come and I will tell you that 90-plus percent of those pictures in my book, and it’s a three-ring binder, are black and Hispanic people from Waterbury, Conn., the Bronx and Brooklyn.”
At the time, LePage offered to share the binder with doubters, but has declined requests by media outlets to make it public. The administration finally did release copies of information from the 148-page document in response to requests made under the Freedom of Access Act.
“Based on what we received today, the binder is a fairly random collection of clippings and emails,” says Alison Beyea, the executive director of the Maine chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who reviewed the binder contents today.
Beyea says it’s still not clear why LePage has been so focused on race.
“Well, we can’t really know what motivated the governor in compiling this binder,” she says. “What we do know is that his statements were racist, they were racially charged and they’re dangerous.”
The document features photos of various people charged with trafficking heroin or other drugs. LePage has insisted that the collection supports his claims that 90 percent of trafficking cases involve black or Hispanic dealers from out of state, but of the more than 90 photos in the document, nearly 60 percent of those charged appear to be white.
In other cases there were no photos, prompting the governor write notes to state public safety officials demanding that they include mug shots in their press releases.
LePage’s claims also run counter to the most recent FBI data from 2014, which indicate that blacks represented about 14 percent of all suspects arrested for drug trafficking in Maine. The agency did not break out statistics for Hispanics.
Beyea says LePage could have obtained access to the complete records by seeking out the proper sources.
“There are multiple government agencies that do collect all sorts of arrest data in Maine and that the governor would rely on an incomplete collection of newspaper clippings to make false and really inaccurate statements about people of color is deeply troubling,” she says.
One of those agencies, the Maine Department of Public Safety, does maintain drug arrest records, but it doesn’t include race when compiling and analyzing crime data.
After LePage distributed copies of his binder, the department issued another press release citing the arrest of five people in the Mexico area on heroin trafficking charges. There were no mug shots included with the release — but all of those charged are from Maine.
