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1999: Child Protection Worker Caroline Lee and I attended at a squalid house
devoid of anything edible but well stocked with liquor and removed grubby
children from two intoxicated, brawling parents. As we left, the parents
screamed out the door at us: “But the children have toys!” 2000: Intervened in a fight at the back of my police station between one of my
police department’s officers and his wife. Later Caroline Lee and I removed a
child from a belligerent, intoxicated mother who was unable to care for
herself, never mind her child. Christmas Day 1978: Took a drunk to detox. Sent a local crook to hospital after attending at
his house to find that hewais high on drugs and slashing his wrists. Took a
report from a citizen who had his house shot up by unknown assailants. 1980: Police Constable Al Arsenault and I hauled one man out of a major
downtown hotel after the inebriated male caused a disturbance with a
prostitute. Later we sent another drunk to hospital that fell through a
window at another West End hotel. 1992: Seized dogs and charged a drug dealer with assault causing bodily harm.
This trafficker, just for kicks, had set his pit bulls on a partially blind
man walking his dog across the grounds of an elementary school. Later I
arrested another crook on a warrant. 1993: Investigated an assault. Later
investigated a break and enter of a restaurant. 1995: Arrested one drunk driver for causing a motor vehicle accident. Attended
to investigate a domestic assault and arrested the intoxicated suspect that
we found hiding under the stairs. Boxing Day 1977: Investigated two domestic assaults.
1979: Police Constable Bill Copp and I investigated an attempted rape. I then
attend a call with my Emergency Response Team: An inebriated idiot showing
off with a rifle to impress his girlfriends had an accidental discharge. The
round went through the roof into the apartment above, narrowly missing the
upstairs tenant. I remember the intoxicated imbecile responsible had
attempted to conceal the bullet hole in the ceiling by putting a bandaid over
it. 1986: Police Constable Ian Carter and I arrested a suspect for breaching his
probation. We made another arrest for attempted homicide following a report
of a stabbing. Later we arrested some suspects for vandalism and seize stolen
property. 1993: Working alone, I investigated three residential break and enters and
investigated two stolen autos. I arrested a person on a warrant and discover
that he was carrying a large quantity of altered credit cards and cash. I
also arrested an impaired driver. 1995: I investigated two residential break ins. Later I investigated a major
brawl at a local cultural center’s Christmas party. 1998: Child Protection Worker Pat Lee and I arrested a mother on an assault
warrant. Later we arrested a father at another residence for assaulting his
family. 2000: Child Protection Worker Caroline Lee and I checked in on a family and
found the parents intoxicated. Dad came charging out of the bedroom and
started a major brawl. Mom joined in, my cover officer fogged the tiny
apartment with a cloud of pepper spray and half of the district’s patrol
officers ended up attending to cover me. Lee managed to escape out the door
to safety with the two young children. People’s
experiences often color their expectations. People see what they expect to
see. As you can see from these seasonal examples, the reality that the police
officer often observes doesn’t always match these seasonal expectations. Seasonal
festivals aren’t the only source of incorrect assumptions. When I was out of
uniform on plainclothes assignments, I wore my pentagram openly. Most people
noticed that I was wearing something on a chain around my neck. Yet it is
amazing how many of these people saw something other than the pentagram that
I was wearing. For example, it was very common for such people to
comment: “Oh! You’re Jewish!” My reply was invariably: “Count again!”
Obviously their mind couldn’t grasp the fact that a cop could be wearing a
pentagram (a five-pointed star in a circle), so their mind told them that
what they were really seeing was a Star of David (a hexagram or six-pointed star). I’ll admit that sometimes I
felt like being cheeky and replying, “Oh! You’re numerically dyslexic!” So
far I have resisted the temptation to do this, as most people who make this
assumption have no nasty intentions. They’ve probably been exposed to some of
the ubiquitous misinformation in circulation about any star with five points
being a Satanic symbol. They are thinking: “If this guy in front of me is a
cop, then this can’t be a five-pointed star, because that would make him a
Satanist.” Their mind then makes adjustments which alters their perception of
what they see. I
may point out to these people that Satanists do use an inverted pentagram as
a symbol: That is a pentagram with two points uppermost. I show them that my
Wiccan pentagram has one point upwards. Each of the pentagram’s five points
symbolizes one of the five elements that make up our world: Air, Fire, Water,
Earth and Spirit. The uppermost point of the Wiccan’s pentagram represents
Spirit, which is the element which binds the other four elements together.
This symbolizes how Wiccans revere the sacred or divine. The Satanist inverts
their pentagram to indicate that they exalt the mundane world (and,
specifically, themselves) over the spiritual one. People’s assumptions color their perceptions all the time. We are all looking at the |
Yule pg 2
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People’s experiences
often color their expectations. People see what they expect to see. As you
can see from these seasonal examples, the reality that the police officer
often observes doesn’t always match these seasonal expectations. |
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Dispatches: Volume 1 No. 7 Yule/Alban Arthan/Mean Geimhridh/La
Ceimbroadh 2006 |
