COLUMN: Don't expect special treatment

From Mike Madden's, "Opiate of the Masses," Fall '98 From Mike Madden's, "Opiate of the Masses," Fall '98The initial buzz has largely died down, but many students still seem upset about the circumstances surrounding College freshman Bill Sofield's arrest the night before Halloween. The murky circumstances of the arrest make it nearly impossible to say who did or didn't misbehave on October 30. So I'm not going to try to take a side on whether Sofield or the University Police have the "right" story. It's the speed and energy with which a lot of other people seem to have leapt to a conclusion about this incident in particular that bothers me. Both the police and Sofield's supporters agree on some of the basic facts of the matter. Sofield, his brother and one of his brother's friends were standing on Locust Walk -- either arguing drunkenly or minding their own business, depending on who you ask -- when Penn cops arrived and started questioning them. In the ensuing confusion, Sofield ended up in handcuffs inside the FIJI house, his brother Richard ended up with a disorderly conduct citation outside the house and the friend, former Harvard football player Warnell "Yode" Owens, ended up with a bloodied head on Walnut Street, after he allegedly assaulted several police officers. Sofield's family and friends, including several FIJI brothers who were inside the house when he was arrested there, say Penn police beat him up for no reason while they were arresting him for disorderly conduct. And now that a Philadelphia judge has cleared Sofield of that charge, a lot of students are taking serious issue with a University Police report that said the cops didn't act inappropriately, either. This may be the beginning of a new political consciousness on campus, but somehow that doesn't seem very plausible. It looks more like Penn students are upset because Penn cops dared to treat a student like a potential criminal, instead of someone whose tuition funds the police payroll. Some critics seem to have taken Judge James Deleon's acquittal of Sofield as a launching point for their belief that things outside the FIJI house on October 30 went badly awry. If Sofield wasn't guilty of disorderly conduct, then he shouldn't have been arrested at all, according to this logic. "The police beat a College freshman in front of witnesses -- the very students they are being paid to protect," 1991 College graduate Laurie Smith wrote two weeks ago in a Daily Pennsylvanian guest column that sums up the indignant attitude this issue has inspired. "Sofield committed no crime. He was and is innocent. The police had no right to arrest him." What? Does anybody else think this notion that someone who's not convicted shouldn't have been arrested is a universal principle for Penn students? What would most people think if this case revolved around a Philadelphia resident and his buddies instead of a student, his brother and a friend? Actually, you don't even have to imagine that one. In 1995, some University Police officers were accused of hitting a man outside of FUBAR, a club at 38th and Walnut streets. These officers had also allegedly beaten up two homeless men outside the Civic Center earlier that night. As with the Sofield case, the police took the accusations seriously, appointing an internal investigation board to promptly look into the incident. Unlike Sofield's charges, though, the police department found that the 1995 accusations were true -- a Penn police officer had, for no good reason, beaten up two homeless men and a guy standing outside a nightclub. The reaction among most students when they read about the case on the DP's front page? Skip to the crossword puzzle. Whereas Sofield's arrest spurred University Council discussion, letters to the DP and angry talk among friends, the cut-and-dry case of abuse that didn't involve a student provoked nothing. People barely even talked about it. Ignorant boredom from Penn also greeted the news of rampant corruption and abuse in the city's police department that has been all over the Philadelphia press for the past few years. The 39th District, where crooked cops falsified evidence, disregarded the Constitution and beat suspects up to obtain bogus confessions, hardly rings a bell in many Penn students' minds. In a lot of ways, scandals like that one demonstrated that this is still the same Philadelphia where Frank Rizzo swept into City Hall in the 1970s after brutally cracking down on crime -- that is, if it was committed by blacks or Latinos. Practically every day, at least one lawsuit filed in federal court alleges that city police or Housing Authority police or local municipal police went way outside the bounds of acceptable conduct in arresting suspects -- often for crimes the suspects were never convicted for. Where's the campus outrage over this? These are clear-cut examples of abuse of police power, not muddy cases like Sofield's. Even Deleon, who acquitted Bill Sofield, said he and his brother Richard were drunk when they were arrested. In light of that, it's hard to say exactly what happened. The University Police have taken a lot of heat for being overzealous this year, especially compared to last fall, when some people seemed ready to install Stalin as police chief if it meant the muggings would stop. It's only self-absorbed hypocrisy that pushes people to get riled up about busted Penn parties and ignore busted heads all over the city. In many students' minds, "college is supposed to be this sacred place where nothing goes wrong, and you can just sit and learn and mature in a sheltered environment," Undergraduate Assembly Chairperson Noah Bilenker, a College junior, said in an interview Monday. "But it's not, [even though] everybody expects it to be." Bilenker has taken many of the complaints about Sofield's arrest to the police and the administration. His impression is that many students wish the police just wouldn't enforce certain laws when it comes to student transgressions. Unfortunately, perhaps, that's not an option, though Director of Police Operations Maureen Rush said she's aware that fact sometimes causes conflict. If you want to take a stand against police brutality, there are plenty of places to start in this city. The local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union has a running dialogue with Mayor Ed Rendell's administration about reforming the police department -- and with the city seeking a new commissioner, the ACLU's input may be even more valuable in the next few months. You could contact Penn's police to urge them to continue using "community policing" tactics that de-emphasize confrontation with local residents and the campus. Or join Bilenker and Rush as they try to open some lines of communication between students and cops, so people might keep things in a better perspective the next time a student is arrested. But if you believe your $30,000 tuition entitles you to better treatment from the campus police than the average citizen deserves, you might want to stop and think for a minute before you lead any protest marches down the Walk.