Public Decency?

Citizen Gavin was resisisting, so i had to thump him a shot of pepper spray.

“I am your Guvvvvv” He swayed. My partner cocked his head, lifted the chin with his blue plastic gloves. We took out the small shrub where he urinated and put it in a bag.

There was going to be evidence of the indecent exposure all over the shrub. This is one of the protocols since we got the cheap batteries from Ubekastan which will not recharge our body cams.

There were several Bald Gentlemen walking around with microphones in their hand all trying to discourage the handling of their boss. When we checked, they did not have the proper paperwork to obstruct our investigation or keep their G-lock guns because recently that sort of firearm was abated as a manner of law.

“The next Baldie who resist can join Citizen Gavin in the car…” they all heard me and still would not disperse. “He stinks really bad. So you will probably stink.”

This was enough for the off-duty Governor’s security detail to disperse. I could understand that they wanted to keep their jobs and go home to their families in one piece. The problem was… their boss had ran away and forgotten that he has no real authority after 10 pm. Our State operates on the assumption that public employees and noise makers like utility companies can only work from 6am to 10pm. There is allowance for State and National disasters but these do not include McGilliles bar in Downtown Sacramento.

Also McGillies gives ‘an irish helping’ which means they don’t usually pour a wiskey to a measured drought. They free pour and if the bartender stops counting in his head things get very convivial.

He could say that the Chinese poisoned him. That was always a decent defense.

Many people wanted to knock on the window to the cruiser and see if their Governor would react. Psychologist call this the Bubble Wrap Hypothesis, meaning that somewhere in our ancient brains we desire to poke tigers in cages to see if they are real tigers. We pop bubble wrap not just to expose the air but to test the point it should break.

“Would everyone please stand back and give Citizen Gavin some dignity.”

It was true. He was caught with his boy parts out. It was also true that zippers are very dangerous and we can do no harm. So he had to dangle all the way to the booking room.

My supervisor came over and whispered, “You know who that is, right?”

I told him to check his watch. 10:33.

“That’s just a citizen after 10.”

I felt the coldness of the night and didn’t care if he was going to talk about the vote over expanding our police pension which mingles with the teacher’s union. My supervisor knew I was supporting 12 children at home, 3 of them mine, and could not afford to go back to work at Target [a box chain shopping store]. They were laying off 1800 employees because a woman sued them for tripping in the parking lot.

“Does Janey know?”

I stared ahead. He meant to infer that I would be released of my duties at 6 in the morning as soon as the Citizen became Governor again, self pardoned and had a hangover of dread. Would my wife accept my sudden firing as a good idea?

I turned into the Sergeant and said, “Janey doesn’t want to live in a world where we have to walk around Gavin’s feces andwait for the street cleaners to take his bits away.”

Then I realized that it was just a tree, a small tree in evidence that would usually be calle a shrub. Janey was an enviromentalist and believed that trees needed watering, even city trees. She would say that I was being cruel to nature.

I could see my children reapplying for food stamps, See my wife knock on the doors of our neighbors and beg them to let her wash their clothing for money. I could suddenly see that I should have been lower in the bottoms and found someone who wouldn’t have power over the lives of so many. That part hurt.

Sarge sees my feelings of utter failure as a husband and dad and says aloud, “The Law of Meghan is clear: No male shall expose himself in public. This man is guilty of a sex crime.”

Someone from the crowd of onlookers quickly screamed: “ALEGEDLY!”

And the Sergeant and I were very glad we had the small tree in an evidence bag that could be easily linked to the disturbance. No one was going to say the chain of custody was bad. Another officer came over and whispered, “You pulled a city property without a permit.”

(shit).

Even with body cam footage everything is “allegedly” these days. Attorneys argue that the cameras are too low on the chest, that the extra two feet below eyes gives shadows and separate perspective. They argue that tactile witnessing of fresh urine could be just tree sap, perhaps dew. They further argue there is no great way to track the evidence of smell. That a thousand pictures of the exposure of Citizen Gavin by a camera phone could be misinterpreted. That the thing sticking out of his pants might be a birth defect.

There is no more eye-witness testimony because jurries have declared it is unreliable. Few are willing to put up their professional reputations for the eyesight of others. We actually have an optometrist standing by if anyone wants to test the issue. It is easier to walk away from crime in the courts then to run away from the peace keepers (the cops) because the latter has a limited force for so much square footage, while the former is designed that we should never put a citizen in the jail unless he really has to be there.

“You know in other countries, they are talking about old laws. ‘If the Wang offends thee, cut it off.’ Are you offended?”

My Seargeant was offended. I was offended. Even though the gear heads typically clean out the squad cars of pathogens, they use UV lights to make sure we are cleaner than the average hotel because a person in custody is ultimately our responsibility, even though…

The remaining security detail dispersed before the Citizen’s campaign manager stepped out of a cab with his pants falling off.

He ran up to us and asked “Who’s in charge?"

My Sergeant stepped away and used his hand to explain I was in charge.

“Do you know what YOU’VE done?”

I blinked.

This man was half awake and talking about the future of America.

“You just killed this country. Gavin was going to be the next President of the free world.”

I looked on ahead. I felt nothing.

The Campaign Manager strutted around, checked that this boss was passed out in the back of my car, came back and made further pleads that I knew not what I had done. It was very fantastic that this man thought we should have separate laws for public officials.

“Can I get your name, sir?”

He paused.

“What do you need that for?”

“I just wanted to write down who came to the scene.”

This man had no official ID. He obviously came on the quick and told the taxi to wait. I could not guess if he had been drinking because drinkers cannot actually perform contracts in the state of California and they cannot self appoint themselves as the legal representatives of any citizen.

“Are you trying to represent the citizen in my squad car?”

“Well, …” It was 11:02. I checked my watch. I prefer to use a diver’s watch at work because Sacramento is surrounded by a river system and one does not need to think of the value of their timepiece if they dive into the water if a need should arise.

The man looked around and tried to explain that he was a handler of sorts. “Have you seen Toonses?”

Sarge wasn’t getting further involved for the time. He put his hands in his body armor and looked over that other officers were keeping back the onlookers, the gaukers, the journalist and the like.

“Who is Toonses?”

I wrote this down.

The man looked perturbed. Obviously he had spent long spans trying to convince the state that Citizen Gavin was a pet lover.

American Domestic Short Haired Cat. I wrote down the description of the timber gray and brown feline. Approximately 13 lbs, with matching whiskers. The Campaign Manager wanted us to put out an All Points Bulletin and then had nothing better to do than ask for my badge number.

“Are you trying to be part of the investigation, Sir?”

He stepped back, mumbled that he would have my badge.

There were 12 children at home who needed their father to continue to work. The state only paid for 9 of them. Most were foster kids and had slowly come home because social services has long lines and the C.A.R.E. facility can often become over-crowded. When someone decided to run a light and hit a building with kids in the car – they usually fall on the officer at the scene to make arrangements.

I had made arrangements so many times.

This man looks at my body came , which wasn’t working, and steps to the side and mumbles, ‘How can we make this go away?’

“What?”

I pretend that I dont’ understand where he is going. It is best to work well with others but we must have a measure of consistency or the foundations of everything soon follow.

He takes out his hands from his pockets and offers to take the cuffs instead of his boss.

“For what?”

“You need a bad guy? Take me.”

That might have been beautiful if it was a capital crime. This wasn’t a capitol offense though it happened in the Capital. It was… just a bump in a person’s life. We all have bumps. We all have strife.

After a time, the Campaign Manager asked if he could see his “friend”. Make sure that Citizen Gavin didn’t need any medical treatment. I opened the side of my car by the door and the man stepped back.

“Who let the cat in the car?”

I looked in and saw the mess.

It was obvious at one glance that the cat wasn’t really this man’s animal companion, that the kitten had taken liberties with what have seen like a flopping rodent in the lap of the Governor

“My G…”

The Campaign Manager shut the door quickly.

“Here’s what your going to do…”