To Protect and Serve....

Mountains of reporting (print, audio, video, internet...) has been in the public realm concerning police/citizen interactions gone horribly wrong of late and it finally dredged up a memory from a rather degenerate period of my life from more than 40 years ago, thought I'd share a story.

Ok, a disclaimer, I don't know if all the folks who were involved in this story are still alive and I certainly don't have any kind of permission to play Mister Expose' so I'll leave off giving names and obscure the location to protect both the innocent and the guilty, this happened in Southeastern Michigan somewhere around 1974 or 1975 after the drinking age was lowered from 21 to 18.

Generally speaking, we were a bunch of pot smokin' acid eatin' rascals who made it a habit to enjoy ourselves to the fullest, the social scene revolved around a couple of drinking establishments on Main Street where we cured cotton mouth by imbibing vast quantities of draft beer while we cranked the jukebox and played pool until the bartender kicked us out at 2:00 am.

One of those evenings saw my friend Rick come out the front door of the bar in fine form (read: zoned out of his mind) at closing time whereupon he began to serenade the street with his horribly off-key rendition of the last tune he had heard on the jukebox.

 At the top of his lungs.

 While staggering aimlessly up and down the sidewalk.

Understand here, this was a small town Main Street, there were apartments above pretty much every business on said Main Street and, in the days before air conditioning, everybody who lived up there had their windows wide open and a fan going to attempt to counteract the astonishing combination of 90-some odd degree temperatures and 101 percent humidity quite common at that time of year, so the sound of a well-crazed drunk/stoned fool singing some rock tune badly at the top of his lungs caused enough of a fuss for somebody to make a call to the city police and complain.

This is where things get interesting....

Sarge was on duty this particular evening, he was well known to all of us and he knew all of our families and had a pretty good handle on what was going on with all of us degenerate delinquent screwballs because he was cool enough to drink in the same bar as us when he was off-duty; he had a genuine concern going and it was made evident on this particular night. When he answered the call of "Drunk Who Can't Sing On Key", he parked the car, got out and put his arm around Rick's shoulder and calmly explained that, nothing personal, he had to do something about a noise complaint and informed Rick that he was going to have to spend the remainder of the night in the drunk tank. Rick realized that he had kinda pushed things a bit too much and allowed himself (and all the other people inhabiting his addled brain) to climb into the back of the police car without incident and without handcuffs. When Sarge got in the driver's seat, Rick realized he was in a tough spot and confessed to him, "Um, Sarge... I've got a bag of weed in my pocket...". Being the kind of guy he was, he looked at Rick, looked at the window that was halfway rolled down, back at Rick and said "You don't see me looking, do you?" and turned back around to drive to the station. Needless to say, the bag of weed went out the window.

The only reason I know about this little misadventure is that Rick showed up at my place early the next morning; after they let him out of the drunk tank he walked back to the spot on Main Street and, sure enough, that bag of weed was still laying there in the gutter for him (and me) to enjoy.

Forty-some odd years later this incident still resonates with me when I look at what "policing" has become. This is what happened back then:

Sarge "served" the folks who made the noise complaint and he "protected" my friend Rick from facing a charge of owning a bag of weed.


What the fuck has happened?


I can offer one observation that may be of relevance, I read something odd surrounding the awful events in Baltimore; a very large percentage of the officers on the force do not live in the city that they patrol on a daily basis!

As the military jargon goes, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

How the fuck are you supposed to do that kind of a job if you don't even live in the same town among those you are supposed to "Protect and Serve"?