- Jul 3, 2014
- 5,268
- 1,707
Police Harassment
Recently, the Chula Vista, California, Police Department ran an e-mail forum
with the local community (a question and answer exchange) with the topic being,
"Community Policing."
One of the civilian e-mail participants
posed the following question:
"I would like to know how it is possible for police officers to
continually harass people and get away with it?"
From the "other side" (the
law enforcement side) Sgt. Bennett, obviously a cop with a sense of humor,
replied:
"First of all, let me tell you
this...it's not easy. In Chula Vista, we average one cop for every 600
people. Only about 60% of those cops are on general duty (or what you might
refer to as "patrol") where we do most of our harassing. The
rest are in non-harassing departments that do not allow them contact with the
day to day innocents. At any given moment, only one-fifth of the 60% patrollers
are on duty and available for harassing people while the rest are off duty. So
roughly, one cop is responsible for harassing about 5,000 residents.
When you toss in the commercial
business, and tourist locations that attract people from other areas, sometimes
you have a situation where a single cop is responsible for harassing 10,000 or
more people a day.
Now, your average ten-hour shift runs
36,000 seconds long. This gives a cop one second to harass a person, and then
only three-fourths of a second to eat a donut AND then find a new
person to harass. This
is not an easy task. To be honest, most cops are not up to this challenge day
in and day out. It is just too tiring. What we do is utilize some tools to help
us narrow down those people which we can realistically harass."
The tools available to us are as
follow:
PHONE: People will call us up and
point out things that cause us to focus on a person for special harassment.
"My neighbor is beating his wife" is a code phrase used often. This
means we'll come out and give somebody some special harassment.
Another popular one: "There's a
guy breaking into a house." The harassment team is then put into action.
CARS: We have special cops assigned
to harass people who drive. They like to harass the drivers of fast cars, cars
with no insurance or no driver's licenses and the like. It's lots of fun when
you pick them out of traffic for nothing more obvious than running a red light.
Sometimes you get to really heap the harassment on when you find they have
drugs in the car, they are drunk, or have an outstanding warrant on file.
RUNNERS: Some people take off
running just at the sight of a police officer. Nothing is quite as satisfying
as running after them like a beagle on the scent of a bunny. When you
catch them you can harass them for hours to determine why they didn't want to
talk to us.
STATUTES: When we don't have PHONES
or CARS and have nothing better to do, there
are actually books that give us ideas for reasons to harass folks. They are
called "Statutes"; Criminal Codes, Motor Vehicle Codes, etc...They
all spell out all sorts of things for which you can really mess with people.
After you read the statute, you can just drive around for a while until you
find someone violating one of these listed offenses and harass them.
"Just last week I saw a guy trying
to steal a car. Well, there's this book we have that says that's not allowed.
That meant I got permission to harass this guy. It's a really cool system that
we've set up, and it works pretty well. We seem to have a never-ending supply
of folks to harass. And we get away with it. Why? Because for the good citizens
who pay the tab, we try to keep the streets safe for them, and they pay us to
"harass" some people.
Next time you are in my town, give me
the old "single finger wave." That's another one of those codes. It
means, "You can't harass me." It's one of our favorites.
Hopefully sir, this has clarified to
you a little bit better how we harass the good citizens of Chula Vista."
Recently, the Chula Vista, California, Police Department ran an e-mail forum
with the local community (a question and answer exchange) with the topic being,
"Community Policing."
One of the civilian e-mail participants
posed the following question:
"I would like to know how it is possible for police officers to
continually harass people and get away with it?"
From the "other side" (the
law enforcement side) Sgt. Bennett, obviously a cop with a sense of humor,
replied:
"First of all, let me tell you
this...it's not easy. In Chula Vista, we average one cop for every 600
people. Only about 60% of those cops are on general duty (or what you might
refer to as "patrol") where we do most of our harassing. The
rest are in non-harassing departments that do not allow them contact with the
day to day innocents. At any given moment, only one-fifth of the 60% patrollers
are on duty and available for harassing people while the rest are off duty. So
roughly, one cop is responsible for harassing about 5,000 residents.
When you toss in the commercial
business, and tourist locations that attract people from other areas, sometimes
you have a situation where a single cop is responsible for harassing 10,000 or
more people a day.
Now, your average ten-hour shift runs
36,000 seconds long. This gives a cop one second to harass a person, and then
only three-fourths of a second to eat a donut AND then find a new
person to harass. This
is not an easy task. To be honest, most cops are not up to this challenge day
in and day out. It is just too tiring. What we do is utilize some tools to help
us narrow down those people which we can realistically harass."
The tools available to us are as
follow:
PHONE: People will call us up and
point out things that cause us to focus on a person for special harassment.
"My neighbor is beating his wife" is a code phrase used often. This
means we'll come out and give somebody some special harassment.
Another popular one: "There's a
guy breaking into a house." The harassment team is then put into action.
CARS: We have special cops assigned
to harass people who drive. They like to harass the drivers of fast cars, cars
with no insurance or no driver's licenses and the like. It's lots of fun when
you pick them out of traffic for nothing more obvious than running a red light.
Sometimes you get to really heap the harassment on when you find they have
drugs in the car, they are drunk, or have an outstanding warrant on file.
RUNNERS: Some people take off
running just at the sight of a police officer. Nothing is quite as satisfying
as running after them like a beagle on the scent of a bunny. When you
catch them you can harass them for hours to determine why they didn't want to
talk to us.
STATUTES: When we don't have PHONES
or CARS and have nothing better to do, there
are actually books that give us ideas for reasons to harass folks. They are
called "Statutes"; Criminal Codes, Motor Vehicle Codes, etc...They
all spell out all sorts of things for which you can really mess with people.
After you read the statute, you can just drive around for a while until you
find someone violating one of these listed offenses and harass them.
"Just last week I saw a guy trying
to steal a car. Well, there's this book we have that says that's not allowed.
That meant I got permission to harass this guy. It's a really cool system that
we've set up, and it works pretty well. We seem to have a never-ending supply
of folks to harass. And we get away with it. Why? Because for the good citizens
who pay the tab, we try to keep the streets safe for them, and they pay us to
"harass" some people.
Next time you are in my town, give me
the old "single finger wave." That's another one of those codes. It
means, "You can't harass me." It's one of our favorites.
Hopefully sir, this has clarified to
you a little bit better how we harass the good citizens of Chula Vista."
