Friday, October 13, 2006
I have a distinct distaste for the police. That should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, however. While I recognize and accept the need for them, that doesn't mean I have to like them or even respect them.
Wednesday night on my way to study group, I saw those flashing lights which strike fear into many a citizen. I wonder if any epileptic has ever had a seizure and the cop been held responsible for it or if they have done research to make sure the lights don't do that. So, I did as a video I saw online said to do and I pulled over, turned the car off, and put my hands on the steering wheel. Supposedly doing this instead of immediately digging for your license, etc. helps to establish a better rapport since the cop can see your hands. Afterall, every stop is potentially dangerous for him and to put at ease any anxiety that may cause right up front is likely to elicit a more favourable response. I couldn't remember from the video whether I was supposed to keep my hands on the steering wheel while he went back to his car to do the calls and paperwork so I chose to do so. He'd pulled me over because my car registration was expired. I did nothing to protest other than a simple "yeah, I've been meaning to take care of that" acknowledgment.
Other than the fact that he issued me a citation and the initial anxiety that one always feels when being pulled over by the police even when one knows exactly why it is happening, the encounter was painless and did not last a particularly long time.
I looked up the code that I was cited for to make sure that I couldn't contest it on a technicality, but it is pretty clearcut. So, today I swung by the courthouse to pay the fine and despite the short duration of my time in that building, it was an interesting experience. The first thing I had to do was go through security screening by metal detector. Prior to entering this I searched my purse to make sure that I didn't have the knife on me (I didn't). While this was a quick and innocuous procedure, it almost seems to serve more of a symbolic purpose of reminding you of the power over you that the government holds than its stated purpose of security.
Walking down to the fine desk, I passed numerous police officers walking around in the building as if they were simple office workers in any normal business save for their uniforms. Police officers play a strange role in society. On one hand they are normal people with otherwise normal lives, interests, and families. Yet on the other hand, they have this power to their role which is of course a cultural construct as any role is. The only real power they have is their physical strength and the weaponry they carry around. All of the rest of it is power that we give them through many levels of abstract representation.... and we respect it. Yet when you think about it, you really can't help but laugh at it and how seriously people take the roles into which they are placed despite the almost completely artificial nature of them. Police in the government really do bear remarkable similarities to clowns in the circus if one looks at it in a structural sense.
Then I got to the fine desk and they said that I couldn't pay it in person yet since I just got it so recently and it has to go to the police station first and then to a desk in their office before reaching the files from which it can be pulled for me to pay it. She even directed my gaze at this gateway desk in the office and the large stacks of paperwork still in queue. I couldn't help but be amused at the amount of ludicrous bureaucracy. What a shitty life it must be to waste away your life as a gear in that machinery.
Yet all of the players in this drama played their roles. The cops with their smug power trips and the clerks with their resigned orderliness. Even I played the accepting and responsible violator. I wonder if any of the players other than me were aware of the farcical and wholly artificial and ridiculous nature of the story we played out.