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| We Need To Explain This All To Ourselves Again |
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| A cop fires and misses. Metaphor Alert |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, December 30, 1998. A few nights ago, up on University Hill, shots were fired by the police as they attempted to apprehend an alleged escaping drug dealer. The activity is certainly of no moment, as University Hill is sometimes seemingly composed almost entirely of dealers and potential customers, depending on the time of day and how jaundiced your view of the world is at the time. It’s those shots that bring you up short. As predicted, the police officer suggested that he thought the man had produced a weapon, and that firing his pistol was necessary. In any event, the officer missed, and the suspect was apprehended by officers on the University campus. This took place around six PM on a weekend night between Christmas and New Years, and in truth the Hill area is not crowded at that time of year, with the college on hiatus and only locals attending the few businesses open. Subsequent investigation has thus far failed to produce any weapon, although that may change, and yesterday the suspicion was that the officer may have seen the flash of a metal from some chain equipment the suspect was wearing - or something. You’ve heard this all before, of course. It is unnecessary to add that the officer is on paid leave pending investigation. And nobody really believes a weapon will be found. I take that as a good sign. In Philadelphia and other places, at least in years past, the police department always had available weapons to be found to excuse some shooting or other. Given the situation, it was probably a reasonable assumption which turned out to be a mistake – no harm done. Well, maybe. Nobody knows where the bullet went, but unless an unpleasant odor starts in a few days from a home whose owner has not been seen of late, no problem. Now, recently much attention has been devoted to the problem of laser light pointers, devices that produce a focused beam of red light that look like nothing so much as an infra-red targeting dot from a sniper rifle. Well, no, they don’t really if you have the time to compare them, but let’s face it, who would have time to check the beam of light on your head against a recognition card of possible sources to make the absolutely correct decision and act on it if you were a police officer? Nobody could do that. Not even I. And there have been episodes around the country where police have opened fire and hit children who were pointing their devices on them. So school districts and bus drivers and others are acting to ban these pointers, which are very popular among those in high school and younger, virtually all male. They are popular – obviously – because they resemble infrared targeting devices, and the advertising for them was done to emphasize that, or at least suggest it. In fact, what use would a high school kid have for one of these on a daily basis? What use the average adult? I’m still thinking about the shooting on the Hill a few days ago, an incident nobody has suggested involved one of these pointing devices, but the issues here are not totally unrelated, if you think about it like this: We have come to the point where we have invented and marketed a device that has no legal usage – or even a practical one - commensurate with its popularity. The use of this product endangers police because they fear – with basis – that its use is designed to distract the enforcement of laws and endanger the lives of the public or the officer responding. It is therefore necessary for the officer to fire first if the device is used upon the officer. In order to avoid these situations from arising, ban the use of the pointless device, pun intended. Thus far, I could be referring to either infrared pointing devices or to those controlled substances we call drugs. Because really, contrary to Miami Vice residue, low end drug dealers use their products a lot and make the stupid decisions hungry people on drugs do. Any alert waitress, bartender, commuter at the RTD station can tell you this, if for some reason you yourself aren’t aware of it. If you’re a cop and a fleeing drug suspect makes a move with a shining object of any sort, it is not paranoia to think it could be a weapon, perhaps a gun, and best to shoot first. It sometimes is, and often enough that a trigger-happy officer just itching to blow away a street dirt bag in one of our cities can get away with firing a gun in a residential neighborhood. It is the nature of the beast we have created for ourselves. We want our families to be safe and untouched by the culture of the street. We want laws and the people to enforce them to accomplish this. We want those same officers to ignore our own illegal addictions and the dealings required to satisfy them. We want the officers to blow away the street people who do not share our own addictions, but we want the police to do so far away from ourselves. And we want the police to be above human emotion and not resent having to deal with human benthics every day of the year, especially Christmas, and be able to distinguish obnoxious, drunken bums from obnoxious drunken fraternity types because they are our children and should not be shot, whereas the former should. We want the police not to get paid too much and rise too high socially, but we want them to feel special so we make their lives and especially their deaths an act of public adoration, with mile long funeral trains of cars, bagpipes, and media coverage sufficient for a Bronco game. But adored objects – even reluctantly adored ones - start making further, incremental demands upon us. For example, an officer killed in the line of duty is now a federal offense; a ten-month-old killed in a drive by is not. It is now, essentially, legal for an officer to fire if he is illuminated by a laser pointer. It is legal in some states to put away a teenager for years for selling pot, provided nothing shone provocatively on an officer during his arrest and he lived that long. And what do we have to show for all this? A better society, a safer one? A more sober one? A happier one? What are we doing, here? What? |
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