Ride along part III

Bill: Wup, there’s a car back there, behind that row of cedars. That’s private property, even though a lot of people think it’s public and park there to go to the river. It’s not, though, let’s take a look.

(Bill did a "U" turn and nosed the car down a muddy road toward the river. There at one edge of a small, wet meadow was a cheap hatchback about 12 years old, with a tarp spread over the back to enlarge the living space. There was a slightly smoldering campfire There were stickers on the front bumper touting organic farming and disdaining war, nuclear power, and cops.)

(Bill typed into the keyboard, looked at the screen.)

Bill: Yeah, stay here.

(Bill got out, un-strapped his gun, put his hand on the butt and stopped about ten feet from the car, squarely in front of the window. He stood partly crouched, ready to drop or spring.

Bill: (distantly) Hello, in the car.

(Even I could see a young, dread-locked kid stick his head up, rub his eyes, go into early morning it’s-a-cop shock, duck down, a second young man with short cropped hair sat up, ducked down. There was a flurry of activity including the pulling on of pants.)

Bill: Get out of the car, keep your hands in clear sight, and walk to the front of the car.

(Young men about 18 with pants but no shirt get out of each door and walked to the front of the car.)

Bill: Anybody else in the car?

Dreadlocks: No, just the two of us. Are we doing something wrong, officer?

Bill: This is private property, do you have written permission to camp here?

Shorthair: There aren’t any signs, we thought it would be O.K.

Bill: Trespassing is considered a serious crime in this county. There are a lot of private parcels and a lot of gold claims. People here don’t like strangers by the river, and some of them carry guns. I don’t want to see you boys get hurt.

Dreadlocks: We’re completely peaceful, we’ve even had peaceful observer training and know how to defuse stressful situations.

Bill: Oh yeah? Let’s see you defuse this situation without me citing you for trespass or searching your car to find drugs and paraphernalia.

Dreadlocks: We’re going to Reno, Nevada. I have a job there, I’m going to try to get my friend on.

Bill: Taking the long way around, aren’t you?

Shorthair: I have my snow board, we thought we’d stop at the top and do some boarding.

Bill: Most people who use the snow go toward Tahoe.

Shorthair: We can’t afford Tahoe. We heard there was some boarding in this county.

Bill: That campfire constitutes littering, a thousand dollar fine. No doubt you pissed around here and probably defecated in bushes, leaving toilet paper. Improper disposal of human waste is a very serious health violation.

Dreadlocks: But only if we leave it, right? If we clean it up and scatter the stones and erase every trace that we were here, we aren’t littering.

Bill: Not if you clean every scrap of charcoal and pack out your waste.

Dreadlocks: What else would make you happy?

Bill: It would make me happy if you clean up and get out of here before I drive back by this way. It would make me happy if you would stop at a proper campground instead of spreading litter and disease through the county. I would like it if you would proceed to the next county before stopping, unless you need to obtain goods or services in out of our villages. Would that make you, happy, too?

Bill: Well, I guess your training worked, I’m not going to cite you or search your car unless you or litter are here when I drive back by, then I’m radioing to other officers to bring you in.

Shorthair: Any litter? I mean, a lot of this was here when we got here, we didn’t actually litter except for the campfire.

Bill: Are you ready to prove that on every piece?

Shorthair: Oh, OK.

Bill: OK? If you love the Mother Earth you’ll want to pick up litter.

Dreadlocks: No problem, officer. We’d be glad to pick up all the litter.

Bill: I’m going about my rounds, I’ll be back by here in about half an hour.

Shorthair: Thank you, officer.

(Bill comes back to the car, snapping his holster strap just before he gets in.)

Bill: That will take care of that problem. If I didn’t make them take that fire ring out, someone would use it tonight, and someone would join them. Before you know it that little meadow behind that screen of cedars would be covered in litter and excrement, and seething with ex-cons, jobless young drifters like those two, and sexual offenders. Because so many communities have declared safe zones for children, and thanks to the web site telling where sex offenders are located, it’s harder and harder for sex offenders to find housing, so more of them are on the road. They congregate in places like that, posing a significant risk to our children. I try to make sure they don’t get started. It’s bad enough we have places like Howard’s Point to deal with.

1. B: Where?

A. B.: Would you have cited them for trespassing and searched their car if they hadn’t agreed to leave?

Bill: Well, the D.A. likes trespass to come from the landowner. But, yeah, if they’d given me any crap at all, I’d have cuffed them both and searched the car.

1. B.: Don’t you need probable cause?

A. B.: What?

Bill: They had red eyes, seemed confused, and had a disagreeable odor. If I found drugs I could have cited them for driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

A. B.: You just woke them up, they probably stink from being on the road. How DWI, when they weren’t driving.

Bill: If they have driver’s licenses, they could drive at any moment. I’d have cited them and taken them for blood samples.

A. B.: If you searched them, what did you expect to find?

Bill: Probably pot, maybe some ecstasy or pills. Maybe a pipe or a razorblade, that’s paraphernalia.

A.B.: If you think they have drugs, why not arrest them?

Bill: Because of the drain it would create for the county. If I cite them here and they know how to use the system, we could end up paying for services for them. Well-meaning but mis-informed publicly motivated things like drug courts complicate the job of sending the guilty to prison.

A. B. I don’t think you had probable cause to mess with those boys. It isn’t fire season, they don’t need a permit for the fire. They are on private land, but they aren’t trespassing unless the owner says they are, and I don’t think the owner actually gives a crap, since he lives in Sacramento. You have no reason to believe they actually littered, and no probable cause to search their vehicle.

Bill: I’d have asked; if they refused, I might not have searched them.

A. B.: The point is, you threatened them. You made judgements about them and threatened them with police action and arrest, and then gave them a punishment it wasn’t up to you to assign.

Bill: What punishment?

A. B.: They had to clean up the litter in the lot. They didn’t do most of it and you know it, most of it is done by high school kids who come here to drink beer and fuck while you’re at home watching the tube.

Bill: So some litter got picked up free of charge. They camped there free, why shouldn’t they pitch in?

A. B.: Maybe they should, but it isn’t up to you to threaten them. What if you searched them without probable cause, what would happen to you?

Bill: Nothing. If I took it to the D.A. she might not prosecute if I didn’t have my probable cause lined up, other than that, nothing. Most people don’t even know their rights.

A. B.: Isn’t it your sworn duty to protect their rights?

Bill: I did that, and more. I got the road cleaned up a little, I protected the rights of the majority of people who live here not to have trash.

A.B.: I get the idea, Bill, you do a lot more than just hassle people on behalf of your masters. Still, there is a little of that, isn’t there? A better example was a few months ago there was a local demonstration against a cell phone tower on Craggy Butte. There were about thirty locals, a few with signs, in the parking lot of the old hotel. I was there, and so were you. I made a short speech about why the tower shouldn’t go in, and you ticketed every illegally parked car, hassled everyone with a movie camera and eventually read us a warning to disperse, which, under state law, should only be done when a crowd is potentially creating a public hazard.

Bill: The cars were parked illegally, so of course I ticketed them. I wasn’t hassling anyone, I was asking for press credentials. I could have cited everyone for trespass, but I saved us all time since if you hadn’t vacated on a warning for trespass I was not going to cite for that since I know the judge would let everyone off, instead I read the warning to disperse because anyone left after that would be charged under stronger statutes.

A.B.: You violated our right to free speech.

Bill: I wanted you to go home before trouble started. You guys had your right to free speech in the letters to the editor in the newspapers every week for a month. It is always the same handful of you. Anyway, you should have gotten a permit to assemble.

A.B.: We looked into it. The county doesn’t require a permit for less than 50 people in town. I doubt you could have made any charges stick. We were peaceably assembled.

Bill: You were in the parking lot of a public business. You could have been hit by a car. You were discouraging hotel trade and accosting a guest.

A.B.: I noticed you personally escorted that guest over to the courthouse.

Bill: It was on my way. Look, you guys had your say, everyone in the county knew how you felt. A lot more of us want that cell tower so we have dependable communication in an emergency. It could literally save lives. It could also increase business locally because there is going to be a satellite up-link for rapid internet on it. For once, people in the village would be able to hook up at more than 19kbs. Why should a businessman visiting here to better the community be treated like a criminal? Who the hell looks at the buttes? We drove past them today, did you look at them? You’ll hardly be able to see the tower, once it’s finished. You people are nuts.

A.B.: That isn’t your job, Bill, to make those decisions. We had the right to be there and to voice our opinion straight to the person who was putting the tower up. We wanted to tell him to his face that the tower was, for us, a scar on the face of a local treasure. We read the site report, there was another site off Craggy that would have worked almost as well, but the private land owner wanted more money than the Forest Service, so to hell with us, it’s going up on Craggy. You helped that process, Bill, you really are a tool of the corporate world, and that isn’t your job. That’s what makes it a police state, Bill.

Bill: No one told me to send you guys home, it’s part of keeping the peace.

A.B.: Nobody had to, it’s part of living in a police state. You’re not only well trained to discourage liberty, your cop culture just makes it natural for you.

Bill: What "cop culture"? I have to make hard decisions in the real world, Aaron. Sometimes those decisions might not fit with your idea of what liberty is, but I have to do something, and I do the best I can. How often do you have to make decisions like that?

A.B.: Never, it isn’t the job I’ve chosen. I do make decisions as a free person, though, and there might be times when those decisions bring me into disagreement with you. In those instances, you’re the mailed fist of those with power over me, and not an American. You’re obeying the law, but violating the spirit of the Constitution, which you’ve sworn to uphold. How do you feel about that?

Bill: It’s the job I’ve chosen. It’s been a good one for over twenty years. I’ll do what my superiors tell me. Right now, they don’t tell me to bust your grandmother for growing seedy pot. If they do, I will.

A.B: If you bust an old lady, or anybody, for growing pot for their own use, when it poses no danger to anybody, that’s tyranny. The imposition of an unfair law, the stealing of our right to be left alone, to be free of arbitrary government interference, it’s un-American, and a worse crime by far than growing a little weed. Police state, Bill.

Bill: Well, I’m going to keep doing what I do, Blinken. I’ll keep the weak, like you, safe from the strong, and I’ll keep the fringe, like you, from derailing the common good. I invited you along so you could see how it is in the real world. Why did you come, to try to convince me of something?

A.B.: No, I came along so you could see how it is in the real world. The power of the police state is played out through your hands. You do a lot of good, no doubt, but no mistake, what you’re really doing is maintaining the status quo.

Bill: Status quo? I haven’t heard that since the ‘60s. If you mean I like things to be orderly and peaceful, it’s my job.

A.B.: No! It isn’t your job to keep things orderly. Your job is to uphold the freedoms promised in the constitution. If you lose sight of that, Bill, you aren’t doing your job.

Bill: So you’d rather I let guys beat their wives, just so someone’s right to be left alone is protected?

A.B.: I know you law and order advocates like to make wild, ridiculous comparisons like that, but no, that isn’t what I’m saying.

Bill: Well, I’m tired of talking about this. I know you can spin words forever, but I’m tired. Let’s talk about something else. Do you fish?

(I stopped recording at this point because it was personal chit chat, though it did reveal a little more about Bill: He’s been married to his second wife for fifteen years and has a daughter who lives with her mother in Florida and who just graduated college. He collects wooden duck and goose decoys, and has one that is worth over three thousand dollars. He has read all of the books of James Michener, Larry McMurty, and Louis L'Amour. He wants to retire and pan for gold. He’s most afraid of dying in a car crash, not being shot by a bad guy.)

Final thoughts: My ride-along with Bill helped me understand how complicated his job is. I still believe we live in a police state, but it isn’t really the fault of neighborhood cops like Bill. Bill simply can’t understand what liberty is, the notion is just outside of his orderly universe in a scary zone of unrest. We want to set him up as the keeper of the common good, which he isn’t. We all want the meth lab busted, we want the alcoholic woman’s kid taken away, we want the dangerous and frightening folks to behave. Bill tries to give us what we want. But, real security doesn’t work that way.

Thomas Jefferson wrote: "Law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual."

In truth, cops have no responsibility to protect any individual citizen, only to stop people from breaking the law; your speed freak neighbor can do every manner of harassment, and usually the cops can’t do much. Life is dangerous sometimes, and when it is, it’s a nightmare, especially if you are very young, or old, or small, or, like me, not real tough at heart. Still, I’ll take my chances with liberty, with cops that don’t try to discourage public displays of freedom, and who don’t act as the military arm of Business America.

We are basically a safe country. For example in 2005 there were about 17,000 people who died in all kinds of homicides, in a country of over 300,000,000. Most of the people who died were young, most were non-white. If you are an old white person, you might be murdered, but probably not, and if you are, it will be by someone you know and chances are, they’ll be drunk.

When cops are more dangerous than criminals, something is wrong. Right now, a cop can literally kill an old woman without going to jail or even being punished.

It’s up to us to make our country and our culture live up to the potential of the Constitution, and to curb the police powers of the state, and the heavily armed cops that enforce them.

On reading this to Granny Wise she said, "Good luck, boy. Most people are still afraid of strangers, and as long as they are, they’ll forget what ever liberty means."