February 10, 2006
Red Alert
by Soren Wuerth
Bad cops, bad cops: whatcha gonna do when they come for you?

     I met a friend the other night for a stroll through Earthquake Park. He had his dogs along, two Labrador pups, and they ran loose and wild along the shadowy, quiet trail, enjoying freedom as no human can.

     When we got back to our cars, we stood and talked for a while. Within moments, I noticed a police car moving towards us. It turned to face us, assaulting us with its headlights. Red and blue lights began flashing, as if we were somehow now in an emergency situation together.

     A young officer jumped out of the car and approached us. He wore fat, black body armor, which made his pale face seem disproportionately tiny. “Did you know the park is closed?” He was young.

     We told him we were just out for a walk. A second police car pulled in, and then a third, a police SUV, crept over. “Can I see your guys’ ID?”

     I don’t know if I was embarrassed for the officer, angry, or nervous. “Did you know your registration is expired?” he told my friend. “Yeah, just by a day. My wife’s taking it in tomorrow.”

     While the cop scrutinized our driver licenses, another cop, with a shiny, bald head, stepped from his car into the sweep of the light. We went back to our conversation while the second officer stared at us.

     After a few minutes, we got our cards back. “Tell me something,” bald head said, pointing at my parents’ Toyota hybrid, “does that car really get 55 miles to the gallon?”

     That was last Sunday night, Super Bowl Sunday. “Here it is, the day with the highest rate of domestic violence reported in the nation, and three cops are checking us out?”, my friend said after the cops had driven off.

     On the front page of the newspaper the next morning, an article reported that the “city can’t keep pace with growing homelessness.” Below it, another said, “freeze cripples villages.”

     While people are dying or nearly dying from the cold across the state, our airport cops are out harassing folks walking their dogs.

     It is a case of misapplied law enforcement. Like that scene in Michael Moore’s film Bowling for Columbine, where Moore asks an officer whether he shouldn’t be investigating the air pollution problem in Los Angeles rather than ransacking the home of some black guy, law enforcement pretends to see something down the street and wanders off.

     U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales did this recently at a congressional hearing on Bush’s illegal domestic spying program. Like the bald-headed cop, many Americans would rather talk about gas mileage than the illegal war we are waging against Iraq (the sticker above my parent’s “55 MPG” personalized plate reads “war is not an energy policy”).

     How can we train those buzz-cut cops toward the real criminals:  the oil companies and other global gassers, Halliburton, landlords, and politicians who strip rural villages of funds to heat their homes?

     Frozen in the cop car’s glare, I didn’t ask myself this question. Instead, I told the officer a secret, “don’t tell anyone, but it only gets 35 miles per gallon in the winter.”

     We laughed together.



Iraq War veteran Joe Hatcher is arrested for taking part
in a counter-recruitment protest in Colorado.




 Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist. He resides in an undisclosed location in rural Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com.