COLUMN: Penn police: a force majeure

From Michael Pereira's "Vox," Fall '97 From Michael Pereira's "Vox," Fall '97Granted, the media's treatment of police has been downright criminal. The day-to-day heroics of many police pass without notice while an instant of corruption explodes into a front-page scandal. Mythologies of police have hardened into stereotypes. But representations of police are not the product of media alone. Here at Penn, for instance, University Police are a visible presence -- part of our daily lives. You can find them whizzing by on bicycles, enjoying a bracing cup at Bucks County Coffee or standing like statues along Locust Walk. In short, you can find University Police at any reasonable hour of the day, wherever there are big, secure crowds. Penn has even augmented the size of its force in the wake of last fall's dying optimism. Thus, the University Police can now be called Pennsylvania's third-largest force -- with a real, hard-boiled Philly P.I. heading the detective unit. Besides police, we will have Spectaguard, Public Safety's Special Services and Victim Support units and Sensormatic Electronics Corporation all working toward public safety from a $2.5 million headquarters on Chestnut Street. They plan to fight crime in a 21st century way, with "crime mapping and photo imaging" and 400 Gs worth of underground wiring. This is a force to be reckoned with -- a force majeure -- that should inspire fear in even the most callous criminals! Yet University Police are still perceived as small and ineffective. Crime persists, slowly but steadily approaching last fall's pandemic proportions. Students still feel afraid rather than at home around Penn's campus and applications are down as a result. The reputation of this academic corporation is in jeopardy! So Penn's Public Safety is receiving a makeover -- courtesy of administration and other pot-bellied power-brokers -- plucking the old impotent image and replacing it with a new foundation of competence. In the meantime, University Police are working to promote a notion of safety with some smaller-scale initiatives of their own, and, like the administration, confusing problems and priorities. I had the pleasure to witness one of their misdirected moral ambushes first-hand about two weeks ago. There was a small soiree near my 41st Street residence -- lively, yet self-contained and redolent of teen spirit. Pop music played at low volume and perhaps there was some watery beer splashing around in the backyard. I think I was enjoying a thermos of martini on my front porch. Across the way, my neighbors -- a bluff and amiable group of post-seniors -- sipped languidly from a split six-pack. Somewhere around 2 a.m., a single-file motorcade of University Police arrived to terminate the party? terminate, it seemed, with extreme prejudice. All festivities slowed to a standstill: the music stopped, of course, and all gazes were trained on the men and women in blue. We looked at them, they looked at us, and nobody knew quite what to do. Then somebody took a sip from something. That was their cue, their opportunity to make an example. The police yelled something, looked at one another and exchanged rectangular salutes, then charged the porch next door. Some 10 police slapped 'cuffs on one victim with a show of violence that seemed choreographed in its excess. They then threw him in the sinners' sedan and whisked him downtown for bright lights and the third degree. According to the various parties involved, this practice of aborting events before their natural conclusion is enforced with students' safety in mind. The thinking goes: if we break up the party promptly at 2 a.m. then everybody will leave holding hands and make it home in one piece. The flaws in this argument, however, are painfully obvious. While so many police were engaged in their charade, there might have been a mugging in progress some blocks down, or a rape, theft petty or large. Who knows? But instead, the energies of University Police were tied up in an on-going campaign not to protect students, but to discipline them and circumscribe their personal space. The aim of their architecture is to contain the student body in a manageable area, to possess our recreation, in short, to make us docile. Need it be added: this would make their job easier? Given: University Police have misplaced their priorities, even if their intentions are laudable (and this too is uncertain). Crime has tarnished their reputation, yet students seem to be the casualty of their scramble for good PR. As the incident on 41st Street illustrates, University Police are confusing real enemies with imaginary adversaries. Contrary to their intentions, the scenario they staged lacked any pedagogic value. Instead of teaching students to walk home in groups, to leave parties at a reasonable hour, to drink responsibly if at all, the message of the University Police came across garbled and inverted. If anything, the incident only obscured the fine line between good and bad, or between confused authority and crime run amok. In a word, it shored up those distorted stereotypes of police which waste energy and undermine relations with the public. University Police that night sacrificed the big picture to the fine print, posing as physicians while their basic effect was to mix poisons. They engendered antagonisms that benefit nobody, seemed evil when they might have meant well? and caused everyone present to forget that one day the University Police may be the best friends you have at Penn.