They say that I'm a criminal.

I'm going to tell you a story. Quite a long one. But I promise that none of the details (well, almost none) are pointless and that I will get to that point. I will most bloody well assuredly get to my point.

It's been a great holiday season. Time with the family. Gave a huge mound of gifts to some my friends' kids. (Some of them even educational!) Plenty of parties. Lots of fun. But the real event that makes this holiday season one to remember has been getting written up on a morals charge.

Yup. That's right. One of our fine men in uniform has determined that I am a corrupter of youth and is determined to see me pay.

While I wait for the papers to arrive in the mail, let me tell you all about it.

My birthday is Christmas Eve. As I'm sure you can guess, this sucks. Luckily Christine, one of the people I know from the IPRC, had the same dilemma. So she arranged a party. At first is was to be on the 24th but with everybody planning to go away and the snow getting deeper all the time, she relented and off we all went for goofy times and bad Chinese food.

And that is why, at 1:00 in the morning, with the 23rd fading into memory and the 24th just begun, I was just then leaving Chopsticks, having left the crowd recovering from my unique rendition of There Is Nothin' Like A Dame (it's not my fault that the karaoke machine mixed up the music and lyrics) and the staff (I hope) pleased with the generous tip I had just put on my debit card. It had been a fun night and, if nothing else, it had been cool to finally get a chance to sit and chat with several people like Indigo Kelleigh and Carolyn Main who I had pretty much just seen around the Portland scene and rarely exchanged more than a sentence or two with. In fact, there had been at least ten at our table from the time I arrived until right before I left.

So, in short, I was in a jovial mood. And I had been there so long that I was even (sadly) stone cold sober. (My booze budget had been hit too hard over the previous weeks.) The view down Burnside was breathtaking, the snow was just a picturesque sprinkling, and the wind was gone. So I decided to walk home. And it was so very pretty. Of course a little part of me winced when a bus actually drove right past but overall I was mellow and delighted. And it being not only after one in the morning but also right in the middle of one of the biggest snowstorms in Portland history, the streets were empty. Everything was closed. I walked right down the middle of Burnside much of the way and the view right down the drive and across to the downtown skyline was enough to warm the heart.

So this was the state I was in as I reached 12th Avenue and Stark.

And there, in the vast lot that has been abandoned for so many years, I saw a wondrous sight. A positive league of holiday enthusiasts, something like ten of them, were building an igloo. And by igloo I mean the real thing. Blocks of packed snow built up like rows of bricks. About eight feet across, two windows, little half cylinder tunnel out of one side, big enough to let you crawl in and out, fit a few adults inside at a time. And even though they were just then starting to taper it in seriously, this wondrous bit of transitory architecture was already up to their shoulders.

And what were they using to build this? A couple of those yellow recycling bins we've all got were being used to gather snow. A beat up little corrugated plastic mail basket was being used to mold the blocks. And an assortment of mugs and cups and a stew pot or two held water to pour over joints and strengthen the whole assemblage. This was American gumption, straight out of Norman Rockwell. And just as pretty.

So, of course, I walked around the lot, up the slippery stairs, down the slope, and over to tell them how cool this was. And, by the way, could they use any help? They said, sure, another person to help fill in cracks and bring snow would be welcome. So I joined in. I told them that chances were good that pictures of this would be in tomorrow's paper, at which point one of them pulled out a camera and started snapping shots of others in the igloo looking out. After a couple of shots they remembered to move the six-pack of Hamms out of the way and to stand so the flash didn't reflect too much.

Well, sadly, this was about it for most of them, so most of the bunch headed in. It turns out that some of them had been there since five or six that afternoon. They were cold and tired and it was time for bed. So this left me and two of the guys. I was sad to see so many of them go since they took a bit of the party atmosphere with them but it let me focus more on things like getting a big chunk of ice to finish off the tunnel entrance and then start packing in snow and ice to smooth out the insides and outsides. Just my kind of thing.

We would have probably been at it for quite a while longer when we saw this guy in black headed our way, dropping his bicycle (!) about thirty feet off. He gets close and his first words are, "I'll need to see some ID; I'm gonna have to be the party pooper here." I would soon learn that "party pooper" was one of his favorite phrases. You see, he was a security guard for the property. And we were trespassing.

Now those of you who don't know southeast Portland won't know the spot I'm talking about. You can see it here. It's a big ol' lot that has people on it all day long. It's used as a dog run. I've seen people wander through it after parties. The only place you won't see anybody is the building, which is so boarded up, chained in, and obviously abandoned that any day now it may be used as the set for Friday the 13th, Part Umpty-zillion.

But as this earnest individual was very adamant we understand, it is, in point of fact, owned by the Portland public schools (from what I understand it actually was used as a school right up until a mere twenty years ago) and so we were on school grounds after school hours and so not only were we trespassing this was about corrupting youth. (Should I ask which youth we were corrupting at an abandoned building at two in the morning? No, I didn't think so either.)

And yes, he did have an additional complaint. You see, once he was there he could see that we had those terrifying cans of Hamms beer nearby. And a couple of them were (as far as I could see) empty. So we had open containers of alcohol in, as he reminded us again, a schoolyard.

The two guys and I had all immediately handed him ID as soon as he asked for it and as he lectured us we all tried to get him to see just what the situation was a little more clearly. As soon as he has finished writing our information in what I assume was his ticket book and given back our ID I asked, "Well, look at this. Can you at least admit that it's pretty?"
His response, in a mumbling into his chest kinda way was, "I built one of those. . . In eighth grade." The pause had been long enough to fit a short opera in, the tone by the end an impressive combination of quietly dismissive and truculent.
"You built one of these. Like this. In eighth grade?" I asked.
"Well, um. . .  mine was a bit smaller."
"A bit?"
"It was smaller. But in my day we didn't have all sorts of special tools and stuff like you guys had. I had to build it with just my hands, just push it together."
Immediately dozens of ads from fifties issues of Popular Mechanics and seventies supermarket circulars started whizzing around in my head. Ads for cheap, easy to use plastic kits for building snow forts and igloos. Not, remember, that we were using any such things. Or, for that matter, that I had needed any in my long ago childhood days of snow fort building.
"but I thought that stuff for making these have been around for ages." Say I. In, of course, the most positively glowingly friendly but sadly perplexed tones. I just need him to explain it to me, you see.
"Well, this was a small town and we didn't have all that specialized stuff."
By this point the ghosts of a hundred thousand onetime children from broke country families, my father, late of the elegant metropolis of Poverty Knob, among them, were surely whizzing all around his benighted head trying to explain to him all that had been done by them with scraps of wood, chucks of discarded cardboard. Even, say, a couple of recycling bins and a box from the curb. But clearly we weren't getting anywhere with this.
I try another tack. I take off my glove again and offer him my hand. "Well, you've seen already from my ID, but even so, hi, my name is Rustin. What's your name?"
"I'm Corporal Saunders."
Corporal. Oh my. Dealing with the upper crust, I see. Actually, he may have said his first name too. He was kinda mumbling that part. But the Corporal came out loud and clear. And I could see Saunders on his little brass nametag so I know that I got that right.
And yeah, by now it was obvious that this was the kind of guy who must have loooved being hall monitor as a kid. Because, you see, it was so unfair that the other kids got to have all the fun. All the kids like me.
The guys and I all try one last time. We're building an igloo for crying out loud. On Christmas Eve. Surely he can cut us some slack. He talks about being "a party pooper" again. He comes back to the open containers of alcohol. I say that I don't know about anybody else but that I haven't had any of the beer and I don't see anybody bring them.
"So they were just sitting here when you got here." he says with a generous helping of sarcasm.
"That's exactly right" I say with complete honesty.
For what it's worth, you'll want to keep three things in mind.
First of all, as you know if you've read from the beginning, I had headed there at one in the morning through a snowstorm and, in fact, hadn't had so much as a sip of beer in the time I had been there. I mean, if nothing else, it's Hamms. I've got plenty of real beer in my place five blocks away. Why would I drink something generously described as PBR's inferior cousin when I had everything from Fat Tire to Bushmills a few blocks away?
Secondly, in the last half hour or so, the other guys hadn't been drinking either. Or at least not as far as I could see. We had actually all been working quite industriously.
Thirdly, it may not have been snowing much but it was snowing. So there is no way that a security guard riding a bike in a snowfall several blocks away could have even seen those few cans sitting amidst tall piles of broken snow blocks and various implements, from, if I understand his original path right, over a small rise.
But our Man In Uniform, from the esteemed ranks of Reliant Security, knows a liar when he hears one and he made a few choice comments more on the credibility of my statement. I would guess that he was about in his late twenties, early thirties but he was determined to come across as a solid authority on this. Which, I will admit, must be hard when talking to a blase guy at least ten years older than you who obviously is nothing like impressed. Though still smiling. Mostly.

Anyway, that was basically it. He made a few more comments, we asked him to let us at least finish the job. He said that we would have to come back and finish it in the daytime. And we all walked off. The next night, round about eleven p.m. I came back with some friends, took some pictures of the now rain-shrunk igloo. Passed a taller guy in a Reliant uniform walking right past. He waved, we waved, we all wished each other happy holidays. We talked to the lady with the dog who was standing right by the igloo and she said that she had been there for a while. I guess that the guy on shift that night was being a bit more reasonable about who was allowed on the fields when.

And now I'm waiting for my charge. Hasn't turned up yet. I'm guessing that whichever cop was supposed to sign off on it has had a good laugh. Of course posting this (with names and all that) has probably increased my odds of being charged tenfold. Which would be cool. I would love to contest it and get a chance to stand in front of a judge (complete, mind you, with a copy of my timestamped receipt from Chopsticks) and tell him the story of my evil deeds building an igloo on my birthday, Christmas Eve.

I could go into more detail. At some point I will.

I could reference the recommended procedure for such encounters from the 2008 training manual issued by the Portland city government that I just happen to have sitting next to me at my desk as I type this. ("Verbal Judo", huh? Interesting run of phrase, that.)

I could talk about more serious examples of what happens when "law enforcement" is about "do what makes me feel good" instead of protecting citizens. About Duane Kercic, who was harassed and detained for taking pictures in a public part of an Amtrak station. To get, mind you, shots for an Amtrak-backed contest for best shots of their trains and stations.

Or really serious stuff like Hope Steffey, who was beaten, stripped, and left naked in a jail cell without explanation for six hours for not showing a policeman sufficient "respect" when he arrived to investigate an earlier incident in which she had been attacked.

Or I could talk about my years working right by the New York City Police Academy and seeing them break laws like it was a daily requirement, all while the academy looked on, disciplined none of them, and graduated just about every one for service as a cop.

But I won't because this is just a silly blog post. No real point at all. Just about a guy in a uniform enforcing some laws against some other guys who were all, without doubt, breaking at least one of those laws. After all, the details don't really matter.

Do they?

Happy New Year. Let's make the best of it.

Comments

[Interrobang]

You might also not want to mention the case in which a police officer took a Q-tip and swabbed four women's eyes with liquid pepper spray while they were peacefully protesting logging in Headwaters Forest, in order to get them to stop protesting. You might also not want to mention all the times cops have Tasered immobile or unresisting citizens, sometimes to death. That might, you know, cast aspersions on law enforcement as it's practiced in (North) America.

[RustinHWright]

Naw. Because if I was going to talk about them, I would have to talk about Johannes Mehserle, who shot a man and killed him while he lay facedown on a BART platform a few days ago. Or about his fellow officer, Hector Jimenez, who has already shot citizens twice, but, only, he assures us, for good reasons.

And that would take us back to things like training and management. Things like how anybody but a cop would have long since been questioned but Mehserle is still hiding behind the Big Blue Wall and getting away with it. Or how cops aren't required to get or stay in the kind of physical condition that people in more demanding jobs, say, waiters in stylish restaurants, have long known they needed to maintain.

No, we wouldn't want to talk about those things. Because if we did we might conclude that these problems are fundamental to who is allowed a badge and a uniform and what they're allowed to do with them. And that would be a discussion I would never want to get involved in.