By Ezekiel Buchheit
Arizona Daily Wildcat
March 2, 1998

Bay of Pigs

Before I even get into my usual rant, I'm going to clear a few things up. Not all cops are bad. Not all cops eat donuts and harass the average citizen. Most do, but not all. Phew. Now that that's out of the way, I hate cops.

You may have read recently that the big head cop of the University of Arizona Police Department is going to soon unveil his plan for more and better police enforcement for the safety of our students.

What? More cops? I can't speak for any one else, but I think that we have enough figures of authority creeping around as it is. An average day's encounters consist of about four patrol cars, two or three uniformed cops on foot, two or three un-uniformed undercover police, several bike cops and, of course, the ever-present crime chopper floating overhead. And I haven't even mentioned the number of security vehicles that cruise by. I would estimate that one encounters a cop every 20 to 30 minutes. Big Brother is watching.

I don't really like cops and not just because with every breath I take I engage in illegal activities and not because of my own personal arrest. It just seems cops are out to get you no matter what the situation is.

An example: Recently, three people from my dorm decided they'd have a few shots (and by a few I mean twelve) and walk down to Babcock to visit some friends. The friends they visited, whose names will remain unmentioned for their safety, had not been drinking. When they, they being the drunks, finally made it to Babcock, they immediately went to speak with the residents when a resident assistant went by and noticed the scent of alcohol. She told them to leave or she would call the cops. So they complied and all five of them left. She called the cops anyway.

When the cops, two cars and a van's worth, arrived, they found the five students engaged in the disorderly and potentially life-threateningly dangerous act of sitting in a parking lot, talking and smoking. And in true cop form, they immediately got out of their cars and began playing their favorite little cop game: harass the citizens. Obviously the first three were busted, as they should have been, for drinking. It's what happened next that I find so annoying. The cops took each person and questioned them separately. When they took one of the students aside, and, remember, this one is sober, they did the little wave-the-pen-in-front-the-eyes test and decided beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was in fact, piss drunk. The student argued for a while, got his breath checked, and the cop finally let him go.

They did the same to the other. He's from Jordan, and he doesn't have a firm grip on the laws around here and what the cops can and cannot do, so when the police gave him the eye test, they once again decided that this student, too, was drunk off his ass. The student assured them that he had not been drinking, to which the cop responded, and I quote, "Your eyes don't lie." The cop continued to razz him, stating that lying to a police officer is a crime and threatening him with stiffer penalties until the student admitted to drinking a beer, despite not having drunk anything with a higher alcohol content than water. These were no longer cops, these were pigs.

And this is why the idea of more police enforcement scares me so. If we have so many police officials that they have nothing better to do than arrest sober, law-abiding citizens, I don't want to imagine what will happen with more. I live in perpetual fear of the cops as it is. What if I look at them wrong and they decide to write me up for manslaughter? What if I trip over a crack in the sidewalk and look drunk? What If I'm having my morning coffee and a donut out on East University Boulevard and a cop, low on money, decides that I present a serious threat, shoots me and steals my donut?

OK, so I sound a little bitter, and you may have noticed that there is no actual information of a statistical nature. Trust me, I tried to get info. I went into the center flames of hell and spoke to the police, but they would give me no information and they refused to call me back.

As I stated before, don't get me wrong, they do serve a purpose, and I'm sure somehow in some way they protect us. But please, Mister Cop, get the real bad guys. Leave the rest of us alone.

Ezekial Buchheit is a freshman majoring in English. His column, "I like Biscuits," runs Mondays.