The Hoover Take Down
The tussle at Hoover High School between a Fresno Police officer and a 16-year old student who was caught crossing a busy street against the traffic signal reminds us that America is a nation of laws and most of those laws are on the books for good reason. It’s also a good opportunity to refresh our understanding of a citizen’s obligations when interacting with an officer of the law.
Since the very beginning, civil society has organized itself around a collection of rules and regulations, which are meant to help everyone understand what is expected and how each will benefit. As soon as The Clan of the Cave Bear grew large enough, somebody had to make some rules so that the hunters didn’t trample all over the gatherers’ stuff. Filching a porridge bowl was a bad thing. Inflicting harm on another was punishable. Killing one’s neighbor, definitely taboo. The growing lore of how the Clan did things was taught by the entire village to all of the village children. Rules. Simple and rational. Functional. Enforceable. For the most part everybody got along.
I’m not sure when it all began to change, but anybody older than, say, forty, can attest that they were brought up with the stern knowledge that when a police officer asked (or told, or commanded) a citizen to “do, or not do” some action, by golly, they obeyed. Cops carried an unassailable mantle of authority; they were the good guys until proven otherwise. Nowadays, not so much. In the current season of exaggerated personal rights and negotiable ethics it is not only acceptable, but downright expected that certain citizens challenge authority at every turn. When a young president, early in his term, chooses to excoriate the behavior of police while excusing obviously bad behavior of a college professor, the message society receives is that police were wrong and its okay to begin dismantling their historical role as legitimate enforcers of proper behavior. Civility begins to tilt just a bit. Add the countless other excused insults against law and order in recent years, the lies and winks and obfuscations, and the result is what we have now – anarchy on certain streets and apathy against rules on every street.
The Hoover High School fracas on Monday last was just a symptom of the sickness. It was the first day of the new school year. A time when administrators remind everyone of the rules (apparently forgotten over those two summer vacation months), when police departments beef up traffic enforcement around schools and write a few tickets, when students re-test the boundaries and perform the many rituals required by peers. The fact that a nearby cellphone was whipped out to record the police takedown of a student (but not the inciting provocation) suggests a set-up. The words spoken and recorded by onlookers tell something, too — well-worn words intended to incite were flung about, hoping to stick. Disrespect is in the air. Confrontation follows. Escalation is possible, if not this time then next.
And why? Because it’s against the rules to jaywalk in front of a school in front of a police officer. Because when a cop says “stop,” it is incumbent on all Americans of every hue to stop first, then ask questions. It has to be this way. This should have been learned in second grade, but apparently some of us need to re-learn the lesson. Jaywalkers’ lives matter. That is why cops are needed to enforce the law.