Many things can be said about the OC Sheriff’s Department in light of the Sheriff Carona scandal. But I always take exception to individuals who use words like PIGS and other renouncements to describe members of the Law Enforcement Community. Unless you’ve driven around with members of the Police community and worked their beat to try to rid the streets of crime, you don’t know what you are talking about. If one day you came home and discovered a strange individual in the house, who do you think you’ll call first? I can assure you, it wouldn’t be your mother. It would be the Police.
I’m not always in agreement with the tactics used by the Police, but after experiencing all the things I have while living in a car, I have gained an interesting perspective on the difficulties of their jobs – the complexities of the laws and the difficulties of prosecuting criminals protected by the Constitution. There are bad cops and then there are mistakes. Unfortunately, there is simply no way to engineer human error out of their difficult jobs. Anytime the human element is thrown into the equation there is that blunder factor. I am happy to say, though, that there are substantially more professionals in uniform with good judgment than there are morons.
One area that could be improved is the set of laws that the law enforcement community are asked to uphold. OC Sheriff’s Spokesperson Jim Armomino, says that bad laws were responsible for the deaths of 4 police officers in Oakland recently. There are many bad laws in the books that should not be there. Those are the targets of many of our advocacy work.
Based on laws, my car should have been towed away by now. The deputies will not admit to this, but they probably find the laws that empower them to impound my car counter-productive, as it will also mean that I will be out on the streets at night instead of sleeping in my car. The officer in this clip, Officer Albert, has inquired about my car registration twice in last several months. Both times, he gave me no more than a verbal warning. It’s remarkable considering my registration has been expired since 2007. Another deputy, Officer J. Souger, gave me a parking ticket recently. When he heard I had to be in court the next day on a civil matter, he gave me a bus ticket for the whole day to make sure I get to court.
Currently, I have two traffic tickets already docketed in court and one on administrative disposition. By the way things are going, I have reason to believe that the cases will morph into a very complex federal action. This is what I call “tough love”. We cannot change laws unless we pursue reform passionately. One way to do that is through case laws and that requires bringing an action to court. I am an impatient man. Should I leave in the hands of legislators the important task of changing the bad laws they crafted in the first place? Or should I come at this as an outsider – as a reformer?
I regard members of the law enforcement community as pillars of our community – our modern day heroes. In these tough times, we want our police unencumbered with stupid and antiquated laws. We want to arm them with laws that are practical, humane and just. We don’t want them putting people out on the streets if it can be avoided.
SEE CLIP OF DEPUTIES VISITING WITH ROBERT
