Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Every Mad Scientist needs a Mom" -- src, 2004-03-07

(Last night the power went out unexpectedly. My own fault for not opening the mail that had arrived during Pennsic as soon as I got home: the scheduled outage that was cancelled due to bad weather got rescheduled for this morning. Still didn't get to sleep until really late though, and was woken after only a couple hours of sleep by loud and prolonged conversation on my front step. *grrr* (Smokers, too.) Then later I was disturbed by lots of automobile horns. So I've not really slept enough. I'm already behind again on email, too.)

I'm finding I have less and less respect for the police. This is not a good thing. But gee, I live in the wrong part of town, and I dress funny, and I *gasp!* take pictures, so the police do more to get in my way than to help me. They've been no help at all when I've been the victim of theft, my main interaction with them seems to be when they pull me over for speeding, sometimes reporting my speed accurately and sometimes quite incorrectly (but hey, "RADAR is never wrong," so whatever they say, the judge is going to go with -- the feeling of powerlessness there isn't helping my attitude any), and they never ever pick off the tailgaters and the dangerous lane-changers who put my life in danger. (Oh yeah, those things aren't measured by a convenient device, are they?) If they're actually making me any safer, they're doing so invisibly; I'm not seeing it. They're also not enforcing the restriction against trucks on my street at night, or doing any sort of noise control. But they're really good at getting tickets onto windshields promptly on street-cleaning days lately, especially on the days when the street cleaner never gets around to showing up.

Today the traffic signal at Lombard & Fulton is out. It's been out since sometime before 15:00, I'm not sure how long. A civilian neighbour took it upon himself to direct traffic, and was doing some good, except that he mostly got honked at and yelled at for his troubles and it looked like he actually got his toes run over at least once. It's now rush hour, and since Lombard is a major enough street to have special rush-hour parking restrictions (if a car were still parked on that side of the street, they'd deal with that quickly enough, since there's revenue in towing), and the block fills up in both lanes pretty quickly, and the folks on Fulton are driving like they're in a hurry, I'd much rather see a uniformed police officer directing traffic. The neighbour finally gave up, and a different neighbour has taken over, but she's using a more timid approach and staying on the sidewalk. In the time I've been watching (I did call the police to report the situation), I've seen three police vehicles go through the intersection, and one off-duty police officer. None have stopped to direct traffic, and nobody has been sent out specifically to direct traffic. At least four buses and three other city vehicles have passed by as well, and it didn't look like any of them radioed in. I've seen a couple of near-misses car-to-car, not counting near-misses for the fellow who was trying to direct traffic.

God forbid the police should actually attempt to prevent an accident instead of writing tickets and calling tow trucks. Oh, but I'm in the wrong part of town, am I not? If this were happening at Lombard and Eutaw, there'd be a cop there.

Fuck 'em. They don't do much for my neighbourhood, they don't do shit for me, they hassle folks for doing anything unusual -- in the name of the War On Abstract Nouns (including bringing me in for questioning because I took a picture in the fog), they treat me with disrespect (okay, not all of them, but I'm on a rant), they ticket me for driving fast on an empty road but do nothing about folks doing things that are actually dangerous, they give me a ticket for a collision deliberately caused by someone else that I tried very hard to avoid, they tell me "tough shit" or act like I'm making stuff up when I try to report a theft (or they politely take a report but don't seem to check with pawn shops like they're supposed to), they take forever to arrive when I call because I could use their help (if they show up at all), they arrive with broken flashlights when I call about someone entering the vacant house next door, in other cities they're violating the fourth amendment as a matter of policy, and if I disagree with them, well they're the ones with both the guns and the power of arrest and judges tend to side with them, so I'm fucked.

I used to see the police as being there to help folks, to protect us, and as vaguely "the enemy" only when I was in the act of driving too fast -- despite the existence of some less-than-wonderful cops, I figured on the whole I should be rooting for them. Say a little prayer on their behalf when I hear a siren. Be polite and respectful to them. Be reassured when I see them on patrol. Be thankful that they're there.

I maintained that attitude for decades. Well fuck that. Maybe there's a jurisdiction or two where it's true, but I give up on the various city, county, and state police departments in whose territories I travel. They can go rot.

I don't trust them to protect me. I don't trust them to help me after they've failed to protect me. I don't trust them to treat me fairly. I don't trust them not to abuse their power. I don't trust them to do their damned jobs. I don't trust them with my civil rights. I don't trust them. And since they have a lot of power to harm me in several different ways, that lack of trust seems pretty important.

The police are, at best, obstacles now.