Commentary

Fight for your Right

Mike gets tear-gassed. Mike gets arrested. Mike forfeits bail. Mike rants.

Run-ins with the legal system (and I use the term loosely) can be more informative than you would dare imagine. To my knowledge, the early morning shenanigans of October 5th make me the first Commentator staff member to ever grace the city of Eugene's fine holding cell (editor's note: Actually, the list of former Commentator editors who have seen Eugene's holding cells would require more space than we have) and this is the expose you've all been waiting for. This is what I've learned (and trust me, it ain't good).

Lesson 1: Don't worry about the tear gas. I'm not entirely sure about he chemical makeup of the stuff, but it makes your eyes, nose, throat and lungs burn like hell. Not exactly pleasant, but if your house should ever be subject to a little incidental gas (if, for example, the people across the road from you are having a party which the EPD feels like gassing) you might want to stay inside. Better yet, bend over and shout, in your loudest voice, "Thank you very much sir, may I have another?" If you are feeling a little pissed off about your red-eyed guests, just sit down and try counting sheep. Not just any sheep though; sheep being led meekly to the slaughter, and see if you can't morph your face onto one of those serene cotton-puff criters. If this doesn't work, just remember that you are a 22-year old student who has been out having some fun, and who is now sitting in his own home with some friends. If you don't deserve to be gassed, who does?

Lesson 2: The cops are here to serve and protect. In case the riot shields and gas canisters were confusing you, the Eugene Police Department would like you to understand that these gadgets are actually worn as tokens of love and affection, not as emblems of oppression. Think of them as friendly, even cutesy reminders that you really should maybe just think about remembering that instead of socializing, you ought to be doing your business homework and watching Nike commercials. Oh, and if the cops, who come to your door aren't wearing these specific reminders of their love for you, don't fret, because the .44 magnum, bullet-proof vest, and spit-shined tin badge mean exactly the same things about love and protection and all that.

I don't really want to get serious, but come on - the cops show up to "protect" people from a party? How many bottles do you suppose were thrown at people before the cops arrived? I wasn't there personally, but I'll bet the exact number would be zero. Protect and serve my ass. The raison d' ertre for our police department, at least, seems to be "to incite and to cite." I'm also a little curious about something else. According to the reports I've read (the incident understandably interested me), 300 people throwing bottles for almost an hour managed to score exactly five hits on police officers. Is it just me, or does it sound like the bottles were not intended to hit the cops after all? Just something for our paranoid cops to ponder. Back to lesson 2.

The riot shield also means that your loving officer is occupied at the moment, even if there is not a soul within sixty feet of him or her. So, if you decide you want to complain about your home being full of the tear gas the police were using to remind all the people who were having fun that really, could they please maybe not do that tonight, well, even if there is no one within sixty feet of him, and you are all by yourself, and your hands are up, and all your want to do is ask a question, well, the shield means that your uncle would love to talk to you later.

Of course, your uncle is probably not in the best mood right now because his other nephews and nieces don't seem to be reciprocating the love he came to share with them. So, instead of saying, "Please come back later" he might say something like, "GO HOME!" even if you did explain to him that your home is full of tear gas and that you would like to complain, and could he please give you the name of the officer in charge. Whatever you do, don't ask him how to spell the officers name, because well, it is actually kind of an embarrassing subject, but he has this deficiency where he can't spell and stare through his riot shield at the same time, and he might get a little bit upset at his own deficiencies and take that out on you, so that instead of spelling the officers name for you, he tells you to put your hands behind your back and get down on your knees, and then he cuffs you (a little too tightly maybe, just on accident) and puts you in the back of the squad car, but it is just to protect and serve you and all those other people who were at the party.

Really, it is about officer safety and community safety, and safety of some other, rather more abstract and ambiguous sorts, but let's just repeat the word safety so you see that really he had no other choice but to arrest you; just trying to protect and serve. (By the way, the slogan, "to protect and serve" seems to be lacking a direct object. On behalf of the Commentator, I'd like to encourage the creative contingent of our readership to call EPD (682-5111) and offer suggestions for filling in this grammatical lack. Some good people to talk to might be Lieutenant Cushman, Sergeant Williams and Sergeant Freeman. I am pretty sure they will even know what a direct object is. Just be sure to spell your suggestions letter by letter, and very slowly.)

Lesson 3: Being in custody can be fun. This is true even when the person sitting next to you in the squad car looks like Charles Manson and is screaming about kicking the cops' asses. In fact, such a scenario can provide for some great fun - for example, pointing out to your high-tension fellow passenger that he is both handcuffed and locked in the back of a squad car. It's a real hoot when this specimen starts to rant about head butting, and then begins to carry out his threats on unconcerned Plexiglass windows. But the squad car is only half the joy.

The actual holding cell is like something from an Orwellian episode of Star Trek - six inch thick steel doors which slide by some mysterious force, and a waiting room (this is where you go to bail someone out at 4 AM) which is decorated exclusively with that one-way glass, and where you are spoken to by a public address system, so that a disembodied voice speaks to you from above. This particular system occasioned a friend (there to bail me out, a $570 investment) to perform what I have to consider one of the greatest allusive feats of all time looking heavenward to say "PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!" Anyway, it isn't just the Star Trek doors and the Big Brother PA system for entertainment. I noticed that there was a television set (not on between the hours of 3 and 5 AM it seems), I guess to ensure that imitates are able to absorb their RDA of Nike commercials. Besides, you get to pose for pictures, looking at the camera, and then to your left, preferably with a threatening scowl, for public relations purposes you understand.

Lesson 4: An American is entitled to his or her day in court. When you report for court fifteen minutes before the time written on your bail papers, you can expect to wait about forty minutes for the judge. And if you've naively prepared for this appearance by looking up the statues under which you've been charged, expecting that the judge will be willing to spend five minutes listening to you explain why these charges are ridiculous and trying you for them is a big waste of money, well, you have been naove. Because all you get to say after that forty minutes (a good fifteen of which are occupied by a video production explaining your rights, during which a judge, or some guy in a choir robe, reads, verbatim, form a piece of paper which you are also provided) is: "Yes, I would like to see a lawyer."

The first time you meet your public defender, you are likely to be impressed. But then when you go to set your pleas, it is somebody completely different, to whom you have never spoken, and who is also managing the cases of every other person in the courtroom - at least sixteen people, including seven English-speakers and one translator to interpret for the other eight. So, he calls you up and you talk and then he talks to everyone else, and then he goes, and talks to the prosecuting attorney, and he comes back to tell you that the prosecution has offered you a deal.

Lesson 5: The legal system is serious business. The maximum penalty you could face if convicted of both Disorderly conduct (Municipal Code 4.725) and Interfering with a Police Officer (4.907), is 100 days in jail and $1500 in fines. Chances of convicting you probably aren't too great, however, and the legal system is a serious (I'm referring you back to the title of the lesson here) business. So, they offer you a deal. Take your chances in court, where anything can happen - your uncle, say could misremember the details of the evening, the circumstances under which he arrested you for example. Or, he could flat out lie. Of maybe your jury is full of fascists, the city of Eugene's personal wet dream. Anyway, there is just that small chance that you might get convicted. This is where bail forfeiture comes in. For those of you unfamiliar with legal jargon, bail forfeiture translates roughly into a bribe. The idea is simple. You pay X amount of money, and the city does you the immense favor of closing your ridiculous case without any finding. You aren't found guilty, you haven't admitted any guilt, you have just forked over a wee bit of the cold hard green stuff in exchange of two things: removing even that slim possibility of a conviction, and avoiding the hassle of going to court with your over-worked public defender. The legal system is serious business. I'll you what, though, it could be run even more effectively.

According to my attorney, someone figured out to put the system on a sort of commission basis, much like parking tickets, where the amount of fines assessed translates directly into an amount of money in the system's pockets. But boy, think how much more money we could be making. Parties, especially, seem like a lucrative business (as I'm sure everyone noticed, from partying college kids to trick-or-treating ten-year-olds, the cops apparently decided to gas the entire city on Halloween night; a sort of holiday prank, I suppose) since people are drunk and having fun, and besides, a lot of them are students and would probably be willing to pay $50 in bribe money to avoid missing to many classes.

But why stop there? How about some new local ordinance, making it illegal to look sideways at a cop? We could cite citizens left and right, and a good fifty- percent of them would probably be willing to pay a small sum to just have the hassle go away. And then we could buy even nicer swivel chairs for the judges and juries, the city could probably afford to increase the budget of the police department and they could buy shiny new riot gear and bitch-ass new shotguns, and more weights to go pump iron, and some of those human-head shaped targets where you get maximum score for putting as many fucking holes in the center of the facial area as you possibly can.

Or better yet, buy some property where EPD could run drills in inciting students to riot, practice their pompous asshole high school jock routines, and maybe even do some target practice with the old tear gas canister, figure out how to maximize the area of dispersion. At the very least, my chunk of bribe money could go towards putting on an EPD spelling bee, in which the final word would be disarmament. As in, no more fucking tear gas.

Mike Kron, a Senior majoring in English, is a staff writer for the Oregon Commentator