Zooze the Horse roams around the pasture near Lamar State College. Zooze thinks about problems in academia. Zhe wants proffies to submit posts (blog posts, not fence posts).
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Hello, police officers.
If I could say just one thing to the police officers on my campus, it would be . . .
I don't see the cops at my school as monolithic. The individual officers can be quite different. I would say different things to each one. One I would give a big hug; another, unfortunately, I would politely avoid.
Stop devoting so much time to writing parking tickets that target the commuters and address the serious drug dealing in the dorms. Especially in the honors dorm--where adderall and ritalin are the drugs of choice.
Why are you ALWAYS parked in front of my apartment? I assure you, I am doing nothing in there that could possibly be of interest to the police, and it's getting a little creepy.
To the chief of police: thank you for showing up at the recent briefing on DACA developments to assure everybody present that your job is protecting everybody on campus, not enforcing immigration restrictions, and that anybody who is the victim of a crime should call you for help.
Thank you, also, for stationing police cadets at major crossings on campus roads at busy times. Their presence definitely increases the chances that drivers will stop at pedestrian crossings.
In addition to the genuine thanks above, you should know that, in a meeting on dealing with mental health issues earlier this year, students of color expressed extreme unwillingness to contact campus police for help, out of a fear that someone in distress would end up dead. While there hasn't, to my knowledge, been an incident with quite such dire consequences on our campus, students do tell stories of questionable stops that ring true to me.
Also, I've noticed that the great majority of those police cadets are white (and male).
So thanks,and there's still work to do (true for all of us).
I don't see the cops at my school as monolithic. The individual officers can be quite different. I would say different things to each one. One I would give a big hug; another, unfortunately, I would politely avoid.
ReplyDeleteStop devoting so much time to writing parking tickets that target the commuters and address the serious drug dealing in the dorms. Especially in the honors dorm--where adderall and ritalin are the drugs of choice.
ReplyDeleteWhy are you ALWAYS parked in front of my apartment? I assure you, I am doing nothing in there that could possibly be of interest to the police, and it's getting a little creepy.
ReplyDeleteTo the chief of police: thank you for showing up at the recent briefing on DACA developments to assure everybody present that your job is protecting everybody on campus, not enforcing immigration restrictions, and that anybody who is the victim of a crime should call you for help.
ReplyDeleteThank you, also, for stationing police cadets at major crossings on campus roads at busy times. Their presence definitely increases the chances that drivers will stop at pedestrian crossings.
In addition to the genuine thanks above, you should know that, in a meeting on dealing with mental health issues earlier this year, students of color expressed extreme unwillingness to contact campus police for help, out of a fear that someone in distress would end up dead. While there hasn't, to my knowledge, been an incident with quite such dire consequences on our campus, students do tell stories of questionable stops that ring true to me.
Also, I've noticed that the great majority of those police cadets are white (and male).
So thanks,and there's still work to do (true for all of us).