The code for a trailer ball

There's a line out there, a line that matters and I'd like to know for sure where it is. Because I've developed a powerful suspicion it isn't anywhere near where it should be.

I'm talking about the line that's crossed when cops stop treating a citizen like one of the people they work for, the people they protect, and start treating him or her like part of the fucking problem.

Yesterday evening on my way home from work I found myself on the side of the road because some silly bitch in a uniform and the little weiner beside her took exception to the trailer hitch ball on the back bumper of my truck.

These wee laws are arbitrary things, apparently, as I've been pulled over in the same truck at least half a dozen times with no mention of the offending ball.

This time it was all about the ball. Which, on this special occasion, was such a menace to the motoring public that the silly bitch wanted me to remove it on the spot. While she ran my licence to see what else I was guilty of.

What? Oh. Because it made it a little hard to read my rear licence plate.

I didn't actually catch her directive at first and when I realized what she'd asked me to do I hopped out to tell her that it wasn't possible without tools. And almost got myself TASERed for my pains. Her sidekick erupted from the passenger side of the cruiser to deal with this new crisis. She'd failed to mention that I'd been given permission, ordered in fact, to wander freely about outside.

"Sir, I'm going to ask you to please remain in your vehicle."

The formal language was in blatant, frankly disgusting, contrast to his bearing, which was: Now or fucking else.

So she explained to him that these were special circumstances, while I explained to her that de-balling did not, in fact, simply involve "a little pin" as she'd suggested it might. And all the while the part of my brain that governs the uneasy relationship between how things should be and how things are was screaming an angry what the fuck.

Because I'm allowed to get out of my vehicle. It's a little item on the very long list of things I'm allowed to do. Just about anything, in fact, other than some really fucking obvious things. Unless there's a very compelling reason for that to change. The fact that it's a little hard to peek by my trailer ball and take in my licence plate does not qualify.

(Okay, there are a few minor things that I'm ridiculously not allowed to do but I'll take my own chances and pay my own dues to quote Kris on those, and it's a different discussion.)

In this post-Dziekanski, post-Ian Bush, post-APEC, post-Frank Paul, post G-20, post-fucking et cetera Canada of ours I hope someone is seriously giving a shit about why we've lost so much respect for those who enforce our laws. I had it. And I'm not an especially respectful guy. And a lot of mine is gone.

And after yesterday I have some beside-the-headlines thoughts on why. Just some small observations. I'll leave the big shit to the big shits and I seriously hope they're on it. Because it matters.

So I feel another song quote coming on. Bruce Cockburn: young man marching, helmet shining in the sun, polished and precise like the brain behind the gun.

It's a nice comparison of a young feller who's been honed into just another piece of equipment with a specific task to perfom and, well, just another piece of equipment with a specific task to perform. Up there on his highly specialized and presumably not terribly imaginative head.

I think it's being implied, and I'm gonna agree, that what's been done to him is a really bad idea. And just the sort of thing I thought we didn't do. Up here.

But after yesterday I'm really curious about the training these folks are given. And if it includes any discussion of a concept called context.

My ferverent hope is that I've just met the two dumbest cops on the planet, cause if not, something is amiss.

Back to the side of the road for a minute, a little further back than previously. To when this dim twit, who could have been my daughter except that neither of my daughters is a dim twit, presented herself at my window and explained about my ball.

"Oh," I responded, tired, a touch impatient, and babbly as ever, "what an unfortunate way to build a vehicle."

Cause it came like that. I didn't do it.

Her face went completely blank. From mostly. Then it got suspicous. And alert for the sort of danger that lurks when some small thing is unexpected or a little out of the ordinary. Cause this wasn't two humans talking. It wasn't an exchange. It was processing a... dammit, I've forgotten the code for a tired, sweaty guy with a trailer ball.

Whatever the code is it sits many miles to the west of the line where cops in my country start treating a citizen of it like anything other than a citizen of it with a trailer hitch blocking a little chunk of his fucking licence plate.

And if the training of these poor people is so defficient that the minute your situation has a code, it is instantly laden with all the sinister potential of every other situation with a code, then they shouldn't be allowed to talk to us until their training gets fixed.

My hunch is that their training is kinda like that. That it is actually pretty bad. But I've dealt with and worked with enough impressive cops to know that if I'm right, the smart ones can get right past it and put a few simple things into perspective when circumstances call on them to do it it.

So another hunch is that recruitment criteria are also a pretty big problem. I'm left to wonder if those impressive individuals somehow sneak in in spite of themselves. And have to figure out for themselves that only a fucking idiot treats a 10-trailer ball guy exactly the same as a 10-rampaging fucking murderer guy.

I'm left wondering, then, if that academy of theirs is not actively seeking those sorts of complex, unpredictable philosophers.

She apologized when she came back with my licence, which had apparently checked out as clean. I never feel confident of this outcome, and, as always, was a touch relieved. It's just such a question of who cared how much about what.

She got the apology wrong, too, though. Didn't apologize for mistaking her silly-ass self for my new boss/god/queen for a few minutes along Kalamalka road. Nope. For forgetting to tell my other little master that she'd decided I was allowed, this time, to get out of my truck and stand on my own two feet.

And for almost almost getting me fucked up in the process.

My trailer hitch ball? Still there. Even though I promised. It'll give me something to think about the next time they're running my licence.