Another Perspective

Pull Me Over. Please.

Parking tickets, MIPs, and noise violations shouldn't rate higher than annoyances like murder and robbery. Oops! I forgot I was in Eugene.

In case you missed it, "Ask a Cop" is exactly what the booth said. It was located in the heart of the street fair, and the only booth that captured my interest.

"Did you know it's against the law to possess a firearm on the U of O campus?" I asked the two as they squirmed coyly in their seats. In a synchronous harmony matched only by the footwork of the legendary Temptations, they glanced down at their trusty side-arms, looked back, smiled and laughed. They didn't answer, they didn't have to. They're Cops.

I was kind of disappointed to find that I wasn't offered a Cop response. While not a major hobby of mine, I'm fond of collecting and even making up a few of my own trademark Cop retorts. At any time during my brief conversation with these gentlemen, either could have come back with, "NO, it's illegal for YOU to have a firearm on campus, now you either MOVE it, or we take a ride downtown!"

No dice.

They could have eyed me suspiciously and quietly responded, "Drug dealers are dangerous people, and there's been an epidemic of drug dealing on campus lately--that's the real reason we're here--you don't mind if we look in that book bag there, do you?"

If I refused, they could naturally assume I was hiding something. The next logical assumption would have been that one would have to be on drugs to be unwilling to cooperate with an officer's request, at which time they could have cuffed and searched me anyway. The half-eaten vending machine brownie gathering lint in the bottom of my book bag for three months would have surely looked to the trained eye of any law enforcement official to be my secret stash of Afghani black tar heroin, and in no time at all, I'd be getting the payback I deserve for being one of those precocious anti-establishment types.

The booth should have been "Dunk a Cop."

"Community Policing" is the term for this smile, laugh and ignore the smart-ass style of Cop PR. Admittedly, the presence of a Cop makes everyone act a little different, riff raff included. It's safe to assume this change in people's behavior is not linked to a Cop's reputation for having a good sense of humor and pleasant demeanor.

The true irony of the Ask a Cop booth is that not more than three blocks away officers scurry about issuing parking tickets to hapless new residents without the proper parking stickers. Cycle Cops chase down and dole out piles of citations to road-rosy returning students still under hypnosis from several hours on the 5. And the cruisers slowly crawl around issuing $500 noise complaint citations and doling out minor-in-possession citations to anyone without an ID (regardless of age).

Meanwhile, some students return to find their CD collections and Macintosh Power books, stereos and VCRs have been pillaged by the summer crop of meth addicts. A quick call to the police reveals that they're far too busy to actually come out, dust for prints and take a report. It would be several hours before an officer will even call back. Another student finds herself in a traffic accident. Another call to the police reveals that, again, they're far too busy to come out, unless of course there's injuries, traffic is blocked or if--Jackpot!--someone is intoxicated.

This, the DUI, is really about the only crime that requires actual incarceration that police seem to be interested in fighting. Hell, you can even get one on a bicycle.

What kind of law enforcement devotes almost all of its resources to administering justice with a fine? Ours, it would seem.

If your garden-variety menace to society can't pay his or her debt to society with a check, it's safe to bet they will have no problem getting away with whatever it is they do. Just ask the dealers and junkies who wile away each evening in the 6th and Blair neighborhoods, getting their respective fixes after a hard day's work of taking what you've got.

Kids bring knives, guns and myriad other weapons to school, and in true John Wayne fashion, law enforcement tackles the evil culprits of dress codes and graffiti.

Kids brutally beat and murder a convenience store clerk, and thrash metal music is implicated as a possible source of motivation for this heinous act. I listened and read with amazement about the vast overtime hours invested by law enforcement to solve this crime. All the while I couldn't help but wonder what they were doing with their regular hours, if tickets to a Sepultura concert are the best motivator for murder they can come up with.

When in court, Cops rarely have a hard time convincing a judge that their accused defendant is guilty. When D.C. police are counseled on the virtues of being "likeable" when before a jury of civilians because there's a strong air of mistrust and hostility emanating from the jury box, one might consider it a clear reflection that civilians and law enforcement aren't on the best of terms outside the courtroom. Have you ever seen a Benz pulled to the side of the road getting the riot act from Officer Bob?

Every time you tune in to "Cops," Fox Network's ratings flagship, are you aware that every time an officer leads the camera crew into a suspect's home, they're assisting the camera crew in a criminal trespass? Of course, the suspect is quickly offered a contract to sign off camera that waives and nullifies his or her rights to pursue a grievance against any member of the army of intruders. But waivers aside, how can a citizen like or trust anyone sworn to the public servitude of law enforcement only to find those same servants breaking the laws they are charged with enforcing, particularly in the name of good PR?

Each time I hear a Cop tell of the woe and tribulation of being understaffed, underpaid, overworked and such, I think of the fleet of shiny green county police Camaros that were commissioned into the fleet with the understanding that the officers driving the vehicles would keep the program with hot-rod police cruisers a self-supporting one.

How do a Cop and his trusty mount support themselves? Certainly, not by capturing thieves and murderers. Not that I had to tell you, but the answer is once again traffic citations.

The "Ask a Cop" booth is now a memory, otherwise I might ask them to give this a quick proofread, since their action would be limited to a laugh and a harder than normal slap on the back. I suppose I could wander down to 13th and hunt down Officer Ken and ask him to give it a read. But as an employee of a campus business, I would hate to waste our business' money, since it is campus area businesses that are paying his salary under a special agreement with the Eugene Police Department.

As I bring this article to a close, a friend is reading along and telling me that maybe I should use that pseudonym after all.

"I'd love to be in your car the next time you're pulled over," said another.

Alas, I have to wait till next year to ask the officers why they think my friends would speak of local law enforcement as though they were the KGB or the Gestapo. Maybe they would be willing to offer a response in writing.

J. Pierson, General Manager of KWVA, is a featured columnist for the Oregon Commentator