Please Oink Yay or Nay

      Let’s all remember back to high school for a moment: those boring nights with friends, where all you could think of to do was cruise around and try to have fun. So what did you turn to? Illegalities, probably. Whatever your particular fix—alcohol, pot, vandalism, maybe even political activism for some of you—there was probably a couple calls you didn’t want to hear from your pals across the parking lot… “Po-Po!”, “Pigs!”, or “5-0!”

      This is not to say that I participated in any of these morally-abject activities. Nor is this to say that I particularly enjoy the presence of America’s Finest Law Enforcement Officers, especially if I were to engage in those after-school activities. I do tend to pay more attention to my relationship with the police, however, after moving in within a block of the police station and courthouse.

      It used to be that whenever I was driving and saw a cop car, I would immediately take my foot off the brake, go through a mental checklist of anything illegal I was doing, and flawlessly perform the little-known Complete Stop at stop signs. But, after a couple months of seeing at least five police cars every day, and especially at such close proximity to my house, I lightened up. I stopped caring, both because it was so frequent that it took a lot of mental energy to worry every time, and also because I considered myself the tick on the bull’s ear: the closer they are, the safer I am.

      All these sightings did prompt me to think about others’ view of the coppers, though. Among most college students, especially those prone to rebellion, questioning of authority figures, or who enjoy the occasional illegal substance, I think the police are generally perceived as Enemy Number 1: The Home Front. In our eyes, they’re trying to restrict our liberty, and that makes them evil. I can admit, I used to be the first to oink.

      I recently had an experience that made me think a little deeper about the general presence of police in our society. I spent six weeks in Huanuco, Peru last winter, the capital of one of the poorest departments. Needless to say, their governmental organization isn’t quite up to par with ours, and the system operates quite differently. There are countless problems, but I witnessed one in particular that piqued my contemplation.

      Every night outside my window, I could hear a rather loud, shrill whistling coming from a man on a bicycle as he passed through the neighborhood in rotations. Every ten minutes or so, I would hear him approach from several blocks away, listen as he passed by my street, and wait for his whistle to fade into the night, only to come around again in another ten minutes. This man was the neighborhood guard. The idea, I think, was to let people in houses know he was there, for protection. I almost couldn’t believe it wasn’t a joke, purely on the absurdity of this plan in action—if the robbers could also hear him coming, couldn’t they appropriately time their burglary so no one would know? I asked my dad about it (he has lived there for the past six years), and he explained to me that it was the best precaution they could give, because if something were to happen, there were no police to help. There is an active law enforcement, but the officers work primarily on bribe, since they get paid close to nothing for salary. They also tend to be untrained and unresponsive to calls for at least 24 hours—that is, until the emergency has safely passed and all that remains is to write a report.

      Juxtapose this situation with one in which everyone hates the police up until the moment they are needed. Imagine not being able to have someone to call when you or your family are abused, raped, threatened, or robbed. Ideally we would live in a society where these things rarely, if ever, occurred, and would be able to handle these atrocities ourselves. But here in the U.S. we purport that safety is a basic human right and thus place human protection under the control of the government, hereby giving us policemen.

      Rightfully, I need to bring in police brutality to the argument. Once again, a person could fill up the whole newspaper with examples of disrespect, discrimination, ignorance, malevolence, and stupidity implemented by the police. And YES, this is a problem—more so in, say Los Angeles, than here, but a problem here nonetheless. I guess the question, then, is whether it’s better to take the good with the bad in the current system (and demand changes to that system) or to have none at all. I can tell you for certain, if you live in Peru—and countless other countries with vastly more corrupt systems than ours—you choose the former.

      The truth of the matter is that the ability to rely on the police in time of need is an absolute luxury. And, as many of us Americans are prone to do, we don’t think about that luxury as existing until it causes us irritation or pain, and then we condemn it. But plainly spoken, the ability to condemn our police is also a luxury not afforded by most people.

      And this is still not to say that I enjoy police officers. I’m definitely not one to sing their graces by any means. I’m simply trying to raise awareness in one small facet of Americans misunderstanding their own elitism. Even those who disapprove of the governmental and/or political system in which we live, myself included, are often times guilty of only looking skin deep into the issue. So I hope I can simply co-exist with the fuzz until a time when people can mutually respect each other. They’ll be there for any emergencies I may have, and I’ll try not to harbor ill heart for their institution as a whole. I’m still not going to come to a complete stop in front of their station, though.