I’m no stranger to making arrests, but there is often a part of me that feels shitty afterwards.
Today is no different. I was driving my bike when suddenly I hear screaming. I look up and a dude is running away from a car. Screaming woman shouts that he stole her phone. I set after him on foot, realise he’s too far ahead, get back on my bike and jump the pavement. Eventually I track him down to where a security guard, acting on a hunch, has apprehended him. We find the phone in his possession, make a citizen’s arrest and cuff him.
And yet somehow I feel shitty. He’s a poor man, probably a desperate man, hasn’t had a bath in a long time. I can still smell him on me as I type this.
Yes, what he did was wrong, logically I know that. But once he got the message that he was definitely not going anywhere other than a cell, he started to plead, and to ask for forgiveness.
Now that all the statements have been written, and the adrenalin has subsided, I have that familiar shitty feeling. It sucks.
Anyone else experience this type of, I don’t know, regret maybe? Inner conflict?
If one has any shred of decency about them, they’ll always be bothered at seeing another driven to unhumanitarian acts out of legitimate desperation. What’s discouraging is the notion that a man may have had no other recourse but to steal in order to obtain even the most basic of necessities.
I hope though that you don’t let that conflict with the acknowledgement that a criminal act must go thru due process of law, regardless of the motion behind it. What he did was wrong and the fact he may have had no alternative but to do it is wrong, but they are mutually exclusive.
Resolving his plight though may well resolve the crime issue, and therein lies legitimate despair because Lord but that’s a rather monumental task.
I used to be a cop (police reserve), and I’ve made one or two arrests as a citizen. Hey, this is the RSA, land of arresting opportunity.
And lieu, yes, you’ve described the conflict well. It’s just that, shit, the crime problem just seems so big. And complex. And when you get to deal with it face to face, the fragile humanity of it all hits you. It’s no longer “them” versus “us”. He’s up close and personal. He breathes, he fears, he shits, he sweats, just like you and me. And yet, what he has chosen to do is unnacceptable. It is violent, abusive, and he must be stopped.
I wonder sometimes if the regret comes from a barely conscious understanding that what we do is outside of the natural order, and is therefore the wrong thing to do? Humans are frequently driven to turn to their predatory nature–how is it right to punish someone for being the animals we really are? Hungry monkey snatches a papaya from hungry but unwary monkey. Hey, that’s life in the jungle, baby–the strong and wary get the goods and the rest feed the tigers. Heck, that’s capitalism. By punishing those who look out for themselves first, we’re subverting natural selection. And isn’t that ultimately detremental to the species?
Point taken. Maybe pure capitalism is no longer The Answer? Maybe we need to be looking at other systems, other solutions? I’m not suggesting communism, which is merely the opposite on the spectrum, but maybe something somewhere in the middle?
There is just so, so much anger in this place. I’m tired, just really tired. Two weeks ago a woman was raped 5 houses from my girlfriend’s house. My girlfriend is understandably freaked. On Sunday she narrowly missed being attacked by a drunk at a traffic light.
I’m babbling. I don’t normally babble. I’m just fucking tired of this shit. Everywhere we look we have security guards. On street corners, everywhere. Everywhere there is either razor wire, electric fencing, pallisade fencing, or cameras. You get in a car, you go on red alert. Everyone is a suspect.
I feel safer in the wild than in my own home. I feel safer in a tent in the Kruger than in Joburg. Everything revolves around keys. Our lives are controlled by fucking keys. It’s one key after the next, one wall after the next, one fence after the next, one gate after the next.
Mellivora capensis - But the world as a whole isn’t like that. Maybe you should move to somewhere more stable. No place is utopian, but I know I can leave my house unlocked when I go to work and come back and all my stuff is still there. And I know if I have a problem with my car or lawn mower, a neighbor will be glad to come over and look at it. I’m 45 years old and I haven’t been accosted by anything more than a drunk at a concert. I can’t remember having anything stolen, ever. Wait - someone once took a 12-pack of Coke out of the back of my truck when I left it in a parking lot with about 10 12 packs sitting there. They didn’t take them all, though. If they needed Coke that badly, I’d’ve given it to them. Ack - I just remembered - someone stole my purse when I left it unattended in New York City. I got it back in the mail a few months later. Whoever took it removed the cash and put it in a mailbox. Eventually the post office tracked me down. Still, that’s not bad in 45 years. Oh…I forget that nasty Jean Yasbeck who would threaten me for my lunch money in grade school. I started bringing my lunch…
Okay, that made me cackle. No, the cuffs were courtesy of the security guard. I do, however, keep cable ties in the Land Rover for emergencies, and they work just as well as cuffs.
StGermain, good point, and as it turns out, we are currently in the process of phasing ourselves out of this city. We’ve already got one of our homes on the market, and once we sell, we will be looking for a place in the bush. We’ve given ourselves till 2010 to be out of here. Especially 2010. That’s the World Cup year, and that’s just going to be total sensory overload for these two hermits.
Eve, good idea, it’s just that I post from work, and to do an “ask the…” thread any justice I need to keep close tabs on it. But I’ll keep it in mind for one of those slow days.
I think it’s empathy. You’re a decent person, presumably, who doesn’t steal stuff. You’d have to be in pretty dire straits to do what that guy did. So it’s human to recognize that his life probably sucks and getting arrested is not going to make things seem much better for him.
I’m much more comfortable with you feeling like crap, than if you were crowing about how he was scum of the earth and that cuffing him was the high point of your day!
I hope you get to balance the feeling bad times with experiences that leave you feeling great also; something where you know you are leaving someone better than when you found them.
