#191 Hobo Cop

So I get this news item. Seems the Washington State Patrol is trying a new tactic to get non-seatbelt wearers, or seatbelt non-wearers, to pay attention. Now, before I go any further, let me state what I tell all my little troopers around the house. It may not be what you want, but it’s against the law. So if you’re caught breaking the law, it may be annoying and you may be angry, but after all it was you that broke the law in the first place.
Naturally, I’m all for civil disobedience and protest when laws are wrong. Otherwise, there’d still be separate race drinking fountains like there was before the sixties. But seatbelts have been proven time after time after time to save lives. Only occasionally does a drunk person ejected from a vehicle as it’s rolling down an embankment survive. The vast majority of them are snuffed and crumpled like a Barbie in the hands of a bully big brother.
So that’s what makes the furor over this supposedly dishonest tactic poignant. A cop poses as a homeless guy with a sign on a street corner. Dare I say it? Kind of a Hobo Cop. The sign says “Happy Holidays, Buckle Up.” Street level allows the bum trooper to see seat belt compliance. If a driver doesn’t pay attention and immediately buckle up the trooper-tramp radios ahead and his uniformed buddies pull over the offending motorist. In Spanaway, they wrote 30 tickets in four hours. Naturally, people are up in arms about being tricked. Even columnist Ken Schram waxed indignant (I was waxing my indignant the other day). He railed about how craven it was and how obviously nothing more than a moneymaking campaign. Yoo hoo. Ken. While tickets do make money they also charge money as a penalty to—offenders. Lawbreakers, as it were, or scofflaws as you so elegantly put it. And if in the process they happen to, like they did, arrest a few people for outstanding warrants, well, all the better.
Interesting, from the trooper’s point of view, was the fact that some people actually offered him money thinking he really was a homeless guy. And one incident was really bizarre. The trooper, remember, was dressed as a homeless guy with a sign that said “Happy Holidays Buckle Up.” A driver rolled down his window, hollered obscenities, and hurled a half-full can of pop at the trooper. The trooper gave him a littering ticket for 1,050 dollars. Side note about the troopers approach to life: The can of pop was half full, according to his report, not half empty. And now the trooper has a far better understanding of what it’s like to be generally vilified by the public at large. But I guess, on reflection, he didn’t need to dress like a homeless guy to get that. That same public is angry with him for enforcing laws that protect people from their own stupidity.
America, ya gotta love it.