Monday, December 18, 2006
Presumptions
In an interesting (to me) discussion over at Jack Bog's place, a commenter named "Sheef" posted the following:The Blogtown post raises an interesting hypothetical. Imagine an industrious blogger nobly opining away at a local coffee shop on a laptop. A thief snatches the laptop and bolts out the door. A cop witnesses the theft and gives chase, but returns to the coffee shop empty handed. The cop tells the blogger, "I'm sorry, but the only way I could have stopped him was by pushing him down, and he could have been hurt. So he got away."Note: "The Blogtown post" that Sheef refers to can be found here.
Does the blogger:
a. Commend the cop for his restraint - it was only a laptop, after all;
b. Commend the cop for his restraint and, upon obtaining a replacement laptop, blog about the virtue of PDX cops;
c. Scream epithets at the cop for not shoving the thief down and stomping on his head in order to get the laptop back; or
d. Throw scalding espresso into the cop's eyes while screaming epithets and, upon obtaining a replacement laptop, blog incessantly about the lazy PDX police who have no respect for private property?
Discuss.
Just taking the question at face value, without considering the presumptions Sheef may be making, is a bit difficult for me. I think that Sheef was trying to personalize the situation being discussed (a police officer injured in the line of duty while chasing down a suspect). If I can guess from Sheef's tone, I think he may be assuming that I, or another commenter, would call for a different response from the cop for "someone else", versus the response I (or another person) would call for myself (or themselves). I could be wrong, though, and I hope to hear from Sheef, or that he at least reads my post.
Obviously I had a first, gut reaction to Sheef's post. But then I thought about it some more, carefully considered my underlying assumptions, and then realized (or, possibly, rationalized) my initial reaction was the correct one for me.
The answer, for me, both on first reaction and after considered thought, is B. I would thank the cop for his effort and commend him on his restraint, and upon getting to another computer, I would probably blog about it. I blog about everything else, after all...
My reasons for this are several, and just taking the situation as Sheef presents it without adding any new assumptions, the basics for me start with the fact that no laptop is worth someone, cop or thief, getting injured over it; and end with the fact that, in my view of police work, they serve the public, including some guy who snatched a laptop off a table. I'm just as uncomfortable with the idea of a cop who views a property theft as an excuse for violence, as I am with the assumption that I see in Sheef's question that a suspect "deserves" a little roughing up.
You can argue that if the cop saw the guy take my laptop, that the suspect's guilt is not a question. But I would argue that it's not the cop's place to make that determination. Our system of justice separates the judgement of guilt from those who enact the laws for a reason, and I see no reason to question that.
And to add a bit to the question (my assumption that Sheef was trying to personalize the situation, so bear with me while I picture myself in the scenario, with all that that entails), since my laptop is an Apple MacBook Pro, my chances of getting it back in one piece are greater if I report it stolen, the thief takes it, sells it for quick cash, and it eventually turns up in an Apple Store for service.
Compare that scenario with the idea of a cop knocking the suspect to the ground. What are the odds a fragile laptop is going to survive that?
Granted, that comparison might not hold for any other crap laptop (heh)... which is why I considered that separately from the basic, no-added-assumptions question. Just sayin'.
Comments:
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First things first - as the poster of the admittedly glib post over at Jack Bog's site, I appreciate the thought you put into responding to my little hypothetical.
Second, you should probably know where I'm coming from. From a "real world" educational standpoint, one of the best jobs I ever had was my summer internship with a prosecuting attorney's office in northern Washington state. This was the first opportunity for me, a sheltered kid of 19, to see real-world conflict outside the cloistered world of college.
During that summer I got to see how both the P.A. and the police worked, and one of the most shocking discoveries was the amount of abuse the police and the prosecutors took from your average citizen. I remember a young cop - who had coached in my Little League and was active in my church - getting berated as a lazy good-for-nothing in our office by a woman whose car stereo had been stolen. The cop's offense? He told the woman that without a serial number or any possible clues as to who did the smash-and-grab, there was little the police could do to help her.
I remember an older cop getting (literally) screamed at by an older woman when her purse got snatched down at the ferry terminal. She didn't get a good look at the thief and she produced no other eyewitnesses, but she tagged him with several profanities when he said that he would keep an eye out but that he couldn't promise her anything.
I remember several defendants inventing story after story about police misconduct in response to being arrested, only to have these stories fall completely to shreds after even the most cursory of examinations. My favorite - a guy nailed for speeding claimed that he was only trying to get away from a harrassing police officer. This story got slammed down when the guy's drinking buddy called him on it, saying that the guy had been bragging for weeks that his new Corvette could outrun any cop car in the state, and he was going to prove it. Confronted by his drinking buddy, the guy recanted his story.
What's my point? That in my experience, which I freely admit is not representative of everyone's, it would be a rare person indeed who would choose options a or b in my hypothetical. Instead, we seem eager to blame the police when we are wronged and the police do not make it right. I'm sure a psychiatrist could explain it with charts, but to me it seems like the exact same dynamic that allows us to scream at the flight attendant when our flight is delayed.
I acknowledge that others can have a different perspective than I can on this subject. But it seems to me that there is a lot of armchair quarterbacking going on with the PDX police. Too many people, sitting in the comfort of their self-righteousness, are quick to label the police a guild of brutes interested more with power than with "protecting and serving."
And based on my experience, the vast majority of the police deserve a knee-jerk "thank-you" than the knee-jerk "f-you" they so often receive.
Second, you should probably know where I'm coming from. From a "real world" educational standpoint, one of the best jobs I ever had was my summer internship with a prosecuting attorney's office in northern Washington state. This was the first opportunity for me, a sheltered kid of 19, to see real-world conflict outside the cloistered world of college.
During that summer I got to see how both the P.A. and the police worked, and one of the most shocking discoveries was the amount of abuse the police and the prosecutors took from your average citizen. I remember a young cop - who had coached in my Little League and was active in my church - getting berated as a lazy good-for-nothing in our office by a woman whose car stereo had been stolen. The cop's offense? He told the woman that without a serial number or any possible clues as to who did the smash-and-grab, there was little the police could do to help her.
I remember an older cop getting (literally) screamed at by an older woman when her purse got snatched down at the ferry terminal. She didn't get a good look at the thief and she produced no other eyewitnesses, but she tagged him with several profanities when he said that he would keep an eye out but that he couldn't promise her anything.
I remember several defendants inventing story after story about police misconduct in response to being arrested, only to have these stories fall completely to shreds after even the most cursory of examinations. My favorite - a guy nailed for speeding claimed that he was only trying to get away from a harrassing police officer. This story got slammed down when the guy's drinking buddy called him on it, saying that the guy had been bragging for weeks that his new Corvette could outrun any cop car in the state, and he was going to prove it. Confronted by his drinking buddy, the guy recanted his story.
What's my point? That in my experience, which I freely admit is not representative of everyone's, it would be a rare person indeed who would choose options a or b in my hypothetical. Instead, we seem eager to blame the police when we are wronged and the police do not make it right. I'm sure a psychiatrist could explain it with charts, but to me it seems like the exact same dynamic that allows us to scream at the flight attendant when our flight is delayed.
I acknowledge that others can have a different perspective than I can on this subject. But it seems to me that there is a lot of armchair quarterbacking going on with the PDX police. Too many people, sitting in the comfort of their self-righteousness, are quick to label the police a guild of brutes interested more with power than with "protecting and serving."
And based on my experience, the vast majority of the police deserve a knee-jerk "thank-you" than the knee-jerk "f-you" they so often receive.
#
posted by 
:: 12/19/2006 8:34 AM
:: 12/19/2006 8:34 AM
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