Officer not so Friendly

A reader sent me a note about his recent experience with Officer Not So Friendly, following an unexpected early morning encounter with a moose. I thought it was worth relaying to you in its entirety, because it’s yet another example of the needlessly adversarial attitude that seems to be becoming the new normal among law enforcers – and justification for the entirely rational fear of police that more and more of us are coming to grips with (as per my latest article; see here).

It’s especially hard for people who are inclined to support police (mostly, on the misplaced belief that they are there to “serve and protect” as opposed to “harass and collect”) to read these stories – and to face up to the reality of law enforcement these days. But it’s increasingly impossible to maintain the illusion that police are anything more than an enforcer class – to be avoided if all possible.

[amazon asin=1590799755&template=*lrc ad (left)]Here’s an object lesson as to why that’s so:

This past Sunday, while I was on my way to work, I hit a moose.

Let me set the stage for you. At 7:30 in the morning in late November at 61° north, it ispitch black. The sun isn’t even considering coming up yet. Add to that that Alaskan moose are huge, ornery, and dumb – they’re used to being the biggest thing around, so they pretty much do what they please and pay no attention to their surroundings. Add to that that I live in the woods, and you can probably guess what happened: I’m driving down the road, moose suddenly bolts out of the woods in front of me, I don’t have room to stop. Smash.[amazon asin=1610392116&template=*lrc ad (right)]

Best as I can reconstruct the actual events of the crash, I think I very nearly stopped in time; I don’t have much front-end damage, and the air bags never deployed. But the moose’s legs were knocked out from underneath it, and it flipped over toward me, hit the top of the windshield, bounced over the car (thankfully my Toyota Yaris is so low to the ground; if I were driving the typical Alaskan wankmobile, he’d have come right into the cabin to join me!) kicked out one of my taillights, and then went on his merry way. As for me, I and my passenger were both completely unharmed; the front of the cabin was crushed, the windshield was smashed in; I don’t see how [amazon asin=1888766077&template=*lrc ad (left)]there could have been any room left in there for the two of us, but somehow we found it.

Some time later, we’re standing by the wreckage waiting for the tow, and the state police arrive. The trooper in question looked to be all of nineteen – your typical wanna-be big man type, pushy and humorless. And, as I would discover, not astonishingly competent. He asked me what happened; I told him a moose ran out from the woods, I was unable to stop in time, and I hit it. He asked me where the moose was; I told him I had no idea, and that it must have run back into the woods.

And then he hit me with it.

“You been drinking?”[amazon asin=1888766093&template=*lrc ad (right)]

What? At 7:30 in the morning on my way to work? I told him no. “Have you been drinking since the accident?” No. “Any alcohol in the car?” No. “Were you drinking at all yesterday?” What? Yesterday? What’s that have to do with anything? I had a couple of glasses of wine with dinner, and I said so.

Which was a huge mistake.

Now, I know better. I know not to talk to cops, and especially not when they’re obviously searching for some pretext to arrest me. And especially I know not to admit that I’ve ever, ever so much as considered allowing a drop of Demon Rum to pass my lips. My only excuse was that, frankly, after miraculously escaping moose murder, I was a bit rattled and not thinking at 100 percent. But, then, who expects to be subjected to a game of life-or-death Twenty Questions in this situation?

Read the rest of the article

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