Lew Tremaine/The View from The Hill
Back when I was teaching a life skills class in middle schools around Marin, I always included a conversation about how to deal with the police. I think, Bruce Springstien put it most succinctly:
“41 shots, Llana gets her son ready for school/
She says on these streets Charles, you’ve got to understand the rules/
If an officer stops you, promise me you’ll always be polite/
And that you’ll never, ever run away/
And promise mama you’ll keep your hands in sight/
Is it a gun, is it a knife, is it a wallet, this is your life/
It ain’t no secret, my friend, you can get killed just for living in your American skin.”
It’s important to pass this information along to your kids. Nothing good ever comes from sassing a cop. Kids get shot when they forget that.
Here in Fairfax, and Central Marin, for that matter, we are extremely fortunate. Our police officers are well led, well trained and well disciplined. Fairfax has been blessed with great police chiefs for the last 25 years. Starting with Ken Hughes, then Chris Morin and now Rico Tabarenza. We have the most diverse department in the county. Officer involved shootings don’t happen here. There was an incident on Bolinas Road a couple weeks ago in which a drunk guy was being confrontational with people on the sidewalk. The police were called and he got confrontational with the responding officers. He injured one of them.
In a lot of places, this guy would have been shot. Not here. Yes the clubs came out, and he regretted his actions, but he survived the experience, because the local police kept their heads.
I recall, when I first got elected to the town council in 1999, before I was even sworn in, I got invited to do a Friday night ride along with one of the Fairfax police sergeants. We did a foot patrol around downtown then got into the squad car. No sooner did we get in, than we got a call for some guy who was pretending to shoot at passing cars on Sir Francis Drake in front of the downtown bus stop. Again, in a lot of places he would have been shot. But the officer I was riding with, did his best to deescalate the situation.
The subject was obviously 5150 (police code for insane) and he wound up getting cuffed and eventually hog tied because he tried to kick out the window in the back seat. We drove him to the psychiatric ward at Marin General Hospital. The good news is, his life was spared.
I was highly impressed with the officer’s compassion, and tolerance.
Back to my original point, Your kids are safe here in the Ross Valley, but they won’t always be in the Ross Valley. And they need to be reminded that it never pays to sass a cop. Everyone has a bad day, and police officers are not immune regardless of their training. Teach your kids to be polite during an “official contact”. It might just save their lives.
(Lew Tremaine can be reached via email at letiii859@yahoo.com.)
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