"I've Been Arrested By You, Take Me In..."

“I see dead people.” I don’t know about you, but I’m fairly afraid of dead people when they’re walking around. Call me a wuss, but they give me the heebie jeebies. “I see cops.” This one scares me more, and I’ve been sober and law-abiding for years now. No, it’s not because I was once a criminal or on the lam, it’s because dead people seem to be less threatening and less ever-present.

I was in Ireland for a week last month and my friends and I used a rental car to get around the country. It’s a damned good thing that the rental contract stipulated no limit to the mileage we were putting on the car (nor did it explicitly discourage leaving small bits of the transmission on the roads of Cork, as we each took a turn learning how to shift with the left and clutch with the right) because we drove everywhere, two or three times it seemed. We put twelve hundred miles on that formerly pristine Toyota in five days. We saw one cop. We drove through cities, towns, burgs, counties and - on at least one occasion - a field full of sheep. We saw one cop. He was parked on the side of a road sitting in his neon yellow cruiser, speaking with a guy from a construction crew.
One cop. Twelve hundred miles. Five days. I imagine there were plenty of others around, but we just didn’t see them.
Now, be assured that I’m not going to play Ice-T here and yell out “Cop Killer!” (Though those who get all up in arms about Ice’s band Body Count’s song all those years ago might want to read up on the past behavior of the Los Angeles police department before they berate him.) I don’t hate cops and I’m not so naïve that I don’t believe them to be necessary for the existence of a just and civil society (which I hope to someday live in, if not here, maybe in Norway.) Cops respond to emergencies, they keep spouses from getting beaten up, they protect kids and everyone else, they stop thieves and perform lots of other useful duties. It’s their job and I realize it’s a hell of a lot harder than mine (except in August, as I’m a waiter who in that month ends up with more frayed nerves than a Bomb Squad technician with Parkinson’s.)
However, I have been counting the number of consecutive days during which at one point or another I have seen a cop. I’m at twenty-one. Oddly enough, I returned from Ireland twenty-one days ago. Some days I drive ten miles, some days a hundred. I usually see a cruiser within two or three. Then again, I live in Eastham.
I drove to Boston the other day and saw one police helicopter overhead, nine State Police cruisers along the way, ten local cops and couldn’t help but notice the cameras on the light poles on 93N. Has anyone ever read “1984” by George Orwell? How about “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury? Some folks (and I use the term “folks” to imply pleasant, down-home, lobotomized morons) say “Well, if you haven’t done anything wrong, there’s nothing to be afraid of.” Again, has anyone ever read “1984,” by George… catch my drift?

The city is one thing. Crime, murder and mayhem are rampant in any city in this country and yes, subtract cops and I’m certain the situation would grow exponentially worse and fast. But this is Cape Cod, and the only place I don’t feel entirely safe is Hyannis, and that’s only because I can’t swim and I fear I might be chased into a sewage pond by Mall Security.
Does knowing there are police officers close by in the case of an emergency allow me to sleep easier? I suppose so, but quite honestly, I give it about as much thought as my car insurance. Does a constant police presence make me feel safer? Not even remotely. Why do I feel less safe and ultimately less free? Because it’s their job.
These people have families, they have lives, they have dreams and desires. If crime goes down or there is a demonstrated lack of necessity for a large police force, cops will lose their jobs. Cops, of course, don’t manufacture crime in order to remain employed, but like any employee, public or otherwise, their job security is only as assured as the need for them.
As an example of justice gone self-serving, a man I know was recently convicted of second degree murder. Without getting into the gory details of the case, let me state that he did in fact do something wrong, but nearly every legal analyst on either side of his predicament expected a manslaughter charge to be levied. Why was it not? The prosecuting Assistant DA was a young prosecutor who had been pressured by the state to come up with as tough a sentence as possible. She needed this on her resume and the state needed this as an example. It had very little to do with justice for the victim, a crystal meth dealer who had raped the perpetrator hours before dying. It had everything to do with the interests of a justice system so deep in red tape, bureaucracy and job security that by the time it came to pay, too many hands were out for anything in the form of mercy or fairness to be given to the man who was going to jail for at least 20 years.

Cops need to be needed. Budgets don’t shrink. Once a helicopter is added to the mix, it stays.
It’s not as if the police are so depraved that they wish for crime and badness to befall their municipality, to think that would be ridiculous. I truly believe that most of them got involved because they thought they could help people and make a positive difference. But now it’s their livelihood and regardless of how noble an officer’s heart is, he or she will rightly put the mouths he or she must feed ahead of a sense of societal balance and justice. I can’t blame them, I can only blame the people who approve their budgets and sign their checks. In the meantime, “I see cops,” and lots of them, and I - law-abiding citizen of the low-crime-rate Town of Eastham that I am - have the heebie jeebies.