Ah, if only the Pierce County Sheriff's Department Citizen's Academy would credential me to do that respectably. Yes, the citizen's academy is my newest challenge as a reporter and blogger.
And a challenge it is. Please, won't you follow me as I endure a 12-week journey of classes with cops? (I missed the first session, coworker Colello covered it, but he can't keep going as he lives in Seattle and it's a massive time commitment.) I know what you're thinking: "12 weeks of classes? Callie, what on earth are you taking 12 weeks of classes for?" The answer is a certificate, thank you very much. But also I will have an opportunity in the later weeks to:
-- Meet the K-9 unit. I love dogs, especially well-behaved ones.
-- Go to the county jail for a tour complete with prisoners (!)
-- Get behind the wheel of a cop car (cop brakes, cop suspension, cop tires ... etc.) and run it through an obstacle course at what cops call "a high rate of speed" after a briefing on how to drive as if you were in "hot pursuit." (!!!)
-- Shoot a cop gun at the range while they run their special criminal simulation projection (!!!!)
As you can see, there are some fringe benefits. Also, as a participant/observer (not plain observer) I get to deliver my devastating wit to the select group of "why do criminals have all the rights"-believing, unwashed-hair having, older white men that this sort of class tends to attract.
But sometimes I have to hold it in check. Like when Deputy Mark mentioned "fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq." Because nobody likes a smarty-pants. Anyway, he was talking about this when I went in — there were two buildings, I waited at the wrong one — because someone asked about the recent bomb threat at Peninsula High School. He also talked about "S.J." by name when discussing an arrest, whose name is put in early novel-style initials here ("a troublesome lad from the surrounds of G__ H_____") because I'm not going to publish it. Apparently S.J. has a brother that's just as much trouble.
Deputy Mark recently arrested S when he caught him hiding in a fence-enclosed construction area. Well, hiding is a charitable way to put it. Basically, it has been raining like gangbusters here for nigh on two months and following footprints is no impossible feat, so when he saw S's footprints it was pretty easy to ask him why he was trespassing. S told him "to steal gas." Why S decides to be honest at that moment, I have no idea. So he's in the pokey.
People hate the brothers J. They are notorious property thieves in the area, apparently, which means, Deputy Mark said, anytime a neighbor sees them coming around the PCSD gets a call. The people are furious. They want to know why the brothers J — especially S — are not in prison (being raped by bigger, angrier men). Short answer: property crimes, people. Get some perspective.
Especially because Pierce County has the HIGHEST crime rate per capita in the state. Great. People are getting raped, beat up and stabbed every day (in fact, Deputy Rusty, who is supposed to be the main facilitator, is late because he's dealing with a stabbing at the moment).
An interesting side note to this fact, Deputy Mark said, is that "COPS" loves to tape in Pierce County because there's sure to be crime to capture. Moreover, because it's so overwhelmingly white, the show is sure to get footage of white guys getting arrested. And they like to tape white guys getting busted as a breather, I suppose, from what they get when they're in New Orleans or New York City or Florida. One classmate said he got homesick watching a Pierce County "COPS" while at music camp in Minnesota.
"They've taped about five," says another classmate.
"Seven," Deputy Mark corrects. The class collectively cringes a little.
Deputy Mark takes the moment to introduce Craig Adams, the legal advisor to the PCSD and a former defense attorney. He likens that to "the Dark Side." Honestly, he's been there, he knows being a defender means little money (for the law) and spending a lot of time with clients who are are often pretty crummy people. It's a noble profession. Oh, and it's playing right into the closed mind set of the 22 students (soon to grow by about six people).
I should take the moment to describe the class. I had heard from Colello that this was "soccer mom" city, but instead, it's mostly older white men. There are a couple of women approaching middle age and a few elderly women. There are also quite a few teens. I think that's appropriate. After all, they're entering their misdemeanor years and they need to know a cop can't search them without their consent. It's all white, which is pretty representative of the area, and there's a powerful streak of conservatism and law-and-order mindset from those who speak up (minus me, but I'm not so much liberal as I am contrarian). There's a powerful trust in the police; one woman who has had a stroke actually wants to give her key to the PCSD in case she has a medical emergency and can't open the door for the cops (they respond they'll break the door down instead — who can blame them? It's an emergency, who's going to go fumbling for the keys?). These people really trust that the cops only collar wrongdoers. As we discuss the limits of cops' abilities to search private property, it really cheeses some of the people in the class that something "obvious," like a high electricity bill, can't be used to search for a grow operation. They just don't see why there should be limits to cops' authority — after all, if you're not doing anything wrong, what are you worried about? I chalk it up to privilege — class, race, gender, the works.
Most of these guys grew up in a time when being a teen didn't put you under suspicion as a drug dealer or vandal or school shooter, too, so they really don't have any experience with being under suspicion. I haven't either, by the state, but when I was in third grade I was accused of writing "Tommy N' Jael" on the meeting house wall by Tommy's mother (Tommy did it, though) who was my teacher. I don't need to recall my own anguish at feeling presumed guilty and totally powerless in order to sympathize with people who are accused of crimes that bear a harsher punishment than an afternoon scrubbing the meeting house wall and a stigma among a more permanent community than elementary schoolmates. Haven't these people seen "The Fugitive?"
The thing is, some of these classmates think they'll never be accused of squat. And they think if they are, all they have to do is take a blow test or empty their pockets and that will prove something. Or that they won't be "acting guilty," which is their standard of proof for a search. It's utterly amazing to me.
Luckily, Deputy Mark is on the side of the rules. He says he likes having to do things by the book, it makes his job an intellectual exercise — he's not just a piece of state-empowered muscle. He says he doesn't want to live in a police state. Yay Deputy Mark!
Craig tells us that Washington State has a set of constitutional amendments that supersede those granted by the U.S. Constitution. I love Washington State. The U.S. First Amendment, which I LOVE, takes power from the government, but in this singular state of the union, we citizens have affirmative grants of rights from the state to us. I LOVE that. I wish I'd taken civics here instead of in Philadelphia.
Also, we have privacy rights in Washington, for one thing, and our particulars and papers and property and other "p" words cannot be searched without our consent. The Washington State constitution makes the Fourth Amendment seem a little puny, indeed. And I LOVE the Fourth Amendment. Oh, who am I kidding, I love all the amendments.
Craig says that if you train in Quantico for some reason, in some courses you will hear, "anyone from Washington State? Okay, here is the additional rule you need to obey."
Craig also leads us through some scenarios permissible under the Constitution, which includes animal sacrifice and marijuana usage for religious purposes. He then says human sacrifice has never been tested under the Constitution, sounding a spooky note. "That may be permissible," he said. I'm thinking the human sacrifice cult will likely not have much luck getting the community to accept their place of worship. When I verbalize this, the rest of the class, at least that part that is paying attention, scoffs. Maybe I didn't say it the right way: Should the Supreme Court allow human sacrifice, of willing victims, I am thinking that is a problem with its own solution built right in.
Some of the older, staid classmates are a little irked that neither constitution takes into account "the sensibility of the community."
Craig moves on to the Second Amendment. "Any gun nuts?" he asks. I see one hand go up and put my own up just to be different. I've never fired a gun. I don't think they're particularly necessary, and it seems like too many psychos get a hold of them. Still, I have to say it kinda blows my mind that on this issue the class — particularly the unwashed hair set — is "liberal." I gotta expand my mind.
Craig mentions a bust he's in on of a B.C. bud ring. So far, they've got almost $8 million in cash and property (excuse me,
contraband) of which about $7.5 million was found during consented searches the dumb criminal could have refused. Well, that's what pot will do, I guess. I feel a slight twinge of sadness for all the professionals, college kids and musicians that will have to smoke schwag instead of sticky icky for the next couple of weeks until a new method of supply can hit the streets.
There is no future probable cause. Another round of concerned glances. Police do not work on hunches, Craig said. According to Malcolm Gladwell, they do, but those hunches are divined from concrete data that is coallated by experienced cops in such a way the normal person cannot do. Actually, they work kinda hand in hand. You may be suspicious of a home with high electricity usage, especially if it is the only home on the block without snow on its roof. But you can only get a warrant as a cop if you approach the home and, in a place that is available to the public, get a fat whiff of dope. But why would you go near there in the first place? Just to get the factual piece of the puzzle in place, it seems to me.
All of the sudden the firefighter class downstairs starts screaming and hollering. It sounds like a Japanese hard martial art class and they're trying to get all their ki out. Or that they're reenacting that part in "Braveheart" but as firefighters against a burning building. I think fleetingly that I'm in the wrong class. They will continue to holler on and off for the rest of the night. Maybe I should go to fireman classes when I'm done with the citizen's academy.
We go through the Miranda Rights, and I'm thinking I'm going to hear more rumblings because Ernesto Miranda was a child molester and he got off because of the Supreme Court, but I don't. There is more anger, though, when the Sixth Amendment is brought up because it is the
accused's right to waive a speedy trial, not the prosecution's. Craig relates a strange, sad tale of a man he defended who said he had an alibi witness for a crime he could not bond out on. The witness had just left to crab in Alaska for the season, and the accused said he'd wait until the crabber came back, it was cool with him, he'd just waive his right to a speedy trial. So three or four months later crabman comes back, meets with the prosecutor and the accused was released that day.
This tale makes me wonder what the crime was in the first place. How come the man couldn't bond out? There must be a more efficient and effective way to run the justice system than on this man's word that he has an alibi as all the rest of the evidence gets outdated and trails grow cold and witnesses move away.
Strangely, the L&O people are a little moved at this tale. One asks if the man was compensated for his time. Nope. Maybe it's the crabbing reference that makes this accused sound not so bad by knowing someone who does such hard, dangerous work. But this guy couldn't just empty his pockets and turn over his home to the police to show his innocence. He was really at the mercy of a guy in the Bering Sea and the cops and the state. And he stayed in jail with no small amount of grace, the way Craig tells it. Maybe he was homeless, or a guy who'd been in trouble with the law or black or a drunk or mentally ill or ugly and dirty or one of any number of factors that leaves him open to prejudice. But at that moment, with so little in the way of personal details divulged, the greasy-haired men maybe could see themselves in that situation.
Aw. I get to wrap this piece up with some unexpected symmetry. I feel so "This American Life."
Before we go, Deputy Rusty tells us the stabber was released from custody because it looked like self-defense, and neither he nor the stabee had criminal records. This fascinates me. Just imagine the narrative, the characters, that these facts suggest not only for that little psychodrama but also for the state of reasoned debate. Also that cops are letting a stabber go free and neither he nor his buddy will necessarily be put into anger management. Blows my mind.
