PAX Centurion - March / April 2014

www.bppa.org PAX CENTURION • March/April 2014 • Page 15 W hen I grew up in Mattapan in the 60’s and 70’s, one of the worst, most disgraceful, shameful things that could hap- pen to any family was to have the police visit your house. It meant that something was wrong inside, and it attracted attention and gossip from all the neighbors. It meant that adults in the house had lost control. With the exception of having a policeman come to your house to sell tickets to the policeman’s ball (a $2.00 donation back then), having a police car in front of your door was shameful. Fast forward 30-odd years; now, we seem to have “families” (highlight the quotation marks) who seem to relish calling the police for every problem, no matter how trivial or stupid. People seem incapable of handling life’s simple problems or disciplining their own children. Schools call the police to deal with 10 year-old children acting up. The abuse of the police has gotten to the point of ridicu- lousness. This phenomenon has occurred gradually over the years, but since the recent DCF (Dept. of Children and Families) scandal involving the missing five-year old children who wasn’t checked on by DCF social workers and is now presumed dead, things are spiraling out of control. Repeatedly, I and many other officers have been dispatched to radio calls requesting that we perform a “well-being check” on some child or adolescent, and the caller is invariably the social worker looking to dump her/his responsibilities on the police.You see, this way, they can write in their case folder that “we notified the police”, and dump off their problem onto another agency. I recently heard an East Boston cruiser dispatched to the Orient Heights projects to deal with “a seven-year-old out of control”. Are you kidding me? What kind of idiot calls the police to deal with their misbehaving seven-year old? If you have a pair of boots in the house, put them on and place one firmly up his derriere. That will stop most seven-year olds from misbehaving, combined with having no dinner and being sent to bed. But this is not an isolated example, by any means. Personally, I’ve responded to calls in the Mishawum projects in Charlestown because an 11-year-old wouldn’t do her homework. I’ve been to a school in Charlestown because an eight-year-old was acting up. (“Yeah, Prin- cipal, what do think I’m gonna do? Subdue the little miscreant while you and your incompetent teachers pull out your cell phone cameras and send in the videoclip toYoutube?”) Act like an adult and slap the little SOB, if that’s what is called for. Christ in Heaven, we used to have something at the James J. Chittick school in the 60’s called “the rat hand” (actually ‘rattan’, but we mispronounced it, it was a rattan bamboo cane).You got it when you disobeyed the teacher. (Nobody was ever permanently disfigured or emotionally scarred, as they all claim today with the benefit of a taxpayer-supplied lawyer) but you remembered it the next time you thought of throwing an eraser at the blackboard or talking back to a teacher. And it’s not just family-trouble calls. It’s everywhere. A culture has been created – and we have our own police departments to blame for encouraging the practice – of dumping any and all prob- lems on the police.You’ve probably all heard the foolish radio calls from morons calling 911 because their order at McDonald’s or Taco Bell was screwed up. In their demented minds, that’s who to call: the police. Every police officer has received calls to some nitwit’s house because: the electricity was out, the water heater broke and the Problem dumping: Abuse of the police? By James Carnell, Pax Editor basement was flooded, the telephone wouldn’t work, etc., etc., ad nauseum . We get called when somebody’s car is broken down (try a tow truck or AAA, for Christ’s sake!), their battery is dead, or their cell phone is lost. (Why in the name of God this department insists on having police units kowtow to cell phone companies who demand a police report because their idiot customer lost their cell phone is be- yond me.) We get called when people lock their keys in the car. Just so you know John Q. Public, none of us carry “slim jims” anymore, because cops got sued for allegedly breaking people’s door locks while helping them unlock the car – again, call a tow truck or AAA. People actually call us when they forgot where they parked their car, due to stupidity, drunkenness or both. We’re supposed to know where they parked from a description such as “it was near a tall building”. (Really?... a tall building? That narrows the search area…). Personal- ly, I’d be embarrassed, but that’s just me. Embarrassment and shame are so… old fashioned. We also cater to alarm companies. Every cop knows that 99.99% of all alarm calls are false or accidental.Years ago, we always asked if there was a MOW (man on the way – an alarm company technician) who could allow entry into a building or shut off the faulty alarm. But over the years, alarm companies got smart: they learned how to cut costs – by laying off alarm service technicians and just… use the police! That way, if there was an actual break-in, they can blame the police for their poor response, even though the police can only observe most buildings from the outside. (“No ma’am, contrary to popular belief, we don’t have keys to every building in Boston or the ability to shut off car alarms.”) We get called when people lose their passports, even though that’s a federal responsibility. The homeless have been trained by the home- less industry to call the police when they want a ride to the shelter – the “blue and white taxi company” Our inside clerks and civilian staff are hammered with phone calls ranging from the sublime to the ludicrous. People who live in Newton and want to drive to Foxboro will call – guess who! That’s right the Boston Police, not the Newton or Foxboro police, because somehow, we’re supposed to know more than the local PD (buying a GPS works wonders, John Q. Public, by the way…). Parents of college kids will call for us to check up on little Johnny or Mary who went to an unknown club in the North End or on Boylston St. (Mary probably doesn’t want you to know what she’s doing at 2:30AM Saturday night, Mom, and general locations like “North End” or “Boylston St.” don’t help us locate your little darling, either…). The point is, problem dumping has become epidemic. It’s up to our department to tell alarm companies that it will cost them $200.00 for every police response, and to tell cell phone companies that we’re not taking time-consuming, useless lost cell-phone reports anymore. If there’s not an actual crime involved or suspected, the public should be told to call the appropriate agency, and not send the police to water or electricity outages or to lecture a recalcitrant child who won’t do their homework. Police officers, once upon a time in a land far, far away, used to enforce laws and arrest criminals. Social workers did social work, the electric company or the plumber did their work, and tow companies responded to broken-down cars, dead batteries and keys locked in the ignition. The time to end problem-dumping on the police is now…