Blues 'Druthers Maybe We Should Insist The Cops Go After Real Criminals. By Jeff Smith THE TWO TRUEST, bluest data of cop information, from the perspective of the civilian citizen, are: 1) When you need one they're never around, and; 2) When you don't need one, as for instance when you're 10 minutes late and 10 over the speed limit, there's one in your rear-view mirror. Despite current stats that deliver the grim reminder that eight out of 10 Americans will be a victim of violent crime sometime in their lives, by far the most common, and almost universally the first, run-in we have with the law is neither as victim nor witness, plaintiff nor posse, but as the bustee in a traffic stop. First impressions being lasting impressions, we tend to take a dim view of the gendarmes from that day forward. It just ain't no fun getting stopped by the police. Indeed it can be quite humiliating. You don't know who's going to see you sitting there in your truck looking sheepish and contrite: probably your boss, minister, your wife's gynecologist and the nosy old biddy from Neighborhood Watch. And you know for damn sure that despite the centuries-old traditions of English Common Law, you are cloaked not in the presumption of innocence, but in the certain consensus that speeding or running a red light is the least of your crimes, and that within seconds the police computer will further identify you as a fugitive pederast and widely known drunk. In a stolen car. With out-of-date tags. English common law did not anticipate the automobile, let alone radar. Innocence my ass: YOU know, the cop knows, everybody driving by knows you're guilty. Why? For starters, radar is right, 999 times out of a thousand. But the real reason everybody knows you're guilty is because everybody has been there, done that. Almost everybody is there, doing that, every time they get behind the wheel--cops probably more than most. So why does the cop approach your window with his hand on the butt of his pistol? Why does he look at you like something he found stuck to the sole of his shoe? Why do small children in passing cars gawk at you with jaws agape, their mothers warning them to look away lest you be able to identify them? Why do you feel like a common criminal? Well for one, you're temporarily in police custody, bathed in red and blue light. Your license number and vehicle description are whirring through distant computers. You are the suspect in a violation of law. Perhaps worse. Every now and then a cop stops a little old lady going five over, strides to her car door and meets the ugly, cyclopean eye of a gun. SOP in routine traffic stops today is to be ready for the worst. That police officer is not sure you're not going to try to shoot him. This is the social context in which we get to know our local police. No wonder there is mutual antagonism. In a sincere journalistic attempt to impart some sense of what part of police manpower and money is devoted to making us all feel like criminals and loathing those sworn to protect and serve, I called the Tucson Police Department and asked: 1) How many people work for the department; 2) How many of those work traffic; 3) What is the annual police budget, and; 4) how much revenue is generated by traffic fines. There is no question mark at the end of the preceding sentence because the sentence itself is not a question, but rather a list of the information I sought. Anyway, after three calls, several transfers per call, some successful, others not, all I was able to obtain by way of hard data was a single datum: As of July of this year, TPD employed 1,131 persons. That's the way cops describe people: persons. You may regard yourself as a people person, and that's nice, but police are persons people. Police persons today are lost in limbo between contemporary PC and just-the-facts-ma'am. They track data (their term) and can tell you precisely how many women, Hispanics, African-Americans and Native-Americans their department employs, but they can't tell you how many cops work the traffic detail, as opposed to burglary, homicide, whatever. Because another of the New Age "advancements" in policing is the Team Concept. There are four teams in town and each has a bunch of squads and each squad has officers doing lots of things, including traffic. And lots of officers work half time at this and half time at that and, well, it's just about impossible, outside of appointing a blue-ribbon task force, to say with any degree of certainty just what percentage of total resources, of all category and type, gets spent handing out traffic tickets. Let's just say: a lot. And let's just say that aside from driving hooty-owl drunk, or strafing school zones, most of the offenses that put us to the side of the road in the ruddy glare of the gumball machines are neither serious endangerment nor notable civil disobedience. Certainly nothing requiring armed and highly trained intervention in the normal, peaceful commerce of daily existence. And let's say further that we essentially law-abiding citizens would look more favorably upon our police--and they on us--if we met more commonly in the context of their protecting and serving us, as per the customary police slogans. And let us recognize a third truism that police administrations are ever and always asking for bigger budgets to put more cops on patrol against the rising tide of violent crime. So the bottom line is this: Why don't we sub the traffic control out to the meter maids or the private sector, issue more warnings and fewer tickets and save a bazillion bucks in insurance premiums, and divert the savings in yearly police budgets to putting more real cops on the trail of more real criminals?

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