Police harassment
THE police in Chula Vista, California, ran an e-mail forum with the local community,
the topic being, "Community Policing." One of the 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 law enforcement side, a Sergeant Bennett gave a comprehensive reply:
"It's not easy. In Chula Vista, we average one cop for every 600 people.
Only about 60% of those cops are on general patrol duty where we do most of our
harassing.
"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 threequarters of a second to eat a
doughnut and then find a new person to harass.
"This is not an easy task. What we do is utilise some tools to help us narrow down
those people which we can realistically harass.
"The tools available to us are as follows:
• "Phone: People will call us up and point out things that cause us to focus on
a person for special harassment. "My neighbour 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.
• "Car: 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 licences
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 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 offences 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 ..."
Durban is launching an inquiry into the metro police? Let's have Sergeant Bennett, of
the Chula Vista police department, California, as an expert witness. Clearly, what we
need is constant police harassment.
Tailpiece
A FELLOW is looking for a place to sit in a crowded university
library. He asks a girl: "Do you mind if I squeeze in beside you
here?"
She replies in a loud voice: ""No, I don't want to spend the night
with you!"
Everyone stares, shocked. He slinks away to another table.
Next thing the girl gets up and walks over to him. She laughs:
"I study psychology. I know what a man is thinking. You felt
embarrassed right? This is for a research project I'm involved in."
He replies in a loud voice the whole place can hear: "R800 for one
night? That's robbery!"
Then he whispers in her ear. "I'm studying law. We'll take you
psychos down any day."
Last word
I'm as pure as the driven slush.
Tallulah Bankhead
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