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The cop who said no
By adamg on Thu, 04/12/2012 - 3:14pm
Jason Mihalko recounts an unpleasant interaction with a Cambridge cop near Harvard Square yesterday:
"Officer can I ask you for some help?"
He responded "no" and proceeded to roll up the window of his cruiser and started to read the Kindle that was resting in his lap.
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Comments
Dereliction of duty
What a scumbag. Fire him. I wonder if this is the same prick that gave me a parking ticket for taking three minutes to unload my equipment outside of Asgard on Tuesday night.
Boo hoo
If I'm not allowed to cut up that one-way street to save having to bike 3 blocks, you're not allowed to block the bike lane or bus stop to unload your shit.
Next time, plan appropriately.
wait wait
Did you have your blinkers on?
If so, you're right, that cop was a TOTAL douche.
Damn right, Brett
Four ways were on.
If you were double parked in the bike lane
..as I've seen many other people unloading outside Asgard, you deserved it.
I and all the other bicyclists who use that very busy bike lane, and would otherwise would be forced to merge into busy Mass Ave traffic are thankful that the Cambridge police are protecting our right to safe travel vs drivers desire not to have to find a legal parking spot or have to walk for a couple of yards to deliver things.
For Chrissakes, pal
I defend the (law-abiding) cyclists about as well as anybody on this site, but you're going to demand that I walk from a meter to the bar with 40 pounds of equipment? Honestly?
There's a social contract here, and I adhered to it.
That bus stop is much longer
That bus stop is much longer than it has to be. They should convert one or two car-lengths into a loading zone.
I bike through there all the time, and I don't mind if people double park to unload if there are no better alternatives.
As a person who commutes by
As a person who commutes by bike every day, I will say that I never understand people who complain about cars blocking the bike lane. It's the same as a double-parked car from a driver's perspective: sure it's annoying, but where else do you expect them to go! There isn't a loading zone outside every building in the city, and until there is, just deal with it if someone has to take a couple minutes to unload something or drop somebody off. Being totally unreasonable and ridiculous does not help soothe bike-car relations.
Seems like a bad idea
I don't know if Cambridge has ever intentionally designed a bike lane and a loading zone that overlap. Seems like a bad idea from a safety perspective. In an ideal world, all cyclists would be highly skilled and would be as comfortable as you are swinging out into the traffic lane to go around a parked vehicle. But reality is different.
So, the reason that particular bus stop is so long is that there's no other safe use for that length of pavement.
I used to work in that building and there's a loading zone on the side of the building that I parked in all the time. It's about a 50-foot walk away from the side entrance of the Asgard. There's also a loading dock on the other side of the building.
I think there might have been a loading zone right next to the front entrance of the Asgard, before the city redesigned the roadway to make room for a new left-turn lane.
Yet another reason to move to Cambridge
Given my experience calling a local BPD station after being run off a bike path by a cop in a "traffic enforcement" vehicle, and then having said cop scream at me while I tried to talk to his lieutenant (who claimed he couldn't hear the other cop), yeeeeeaaaaaah.
Bike Vs Cars - Take 5,023 (give or take a few)
Not going to go there...but riding up one-way streets is always a no-no (Drat. Did it again.)
Aside from that. This guy lost an envelope and he wanted to ask the officer if, perchance, someone had given it to him. Ok. Fair enough.
What is inconsistent, though, is that he writes the officer was speaking with two women (who were looking for directions) as he walked up to the cruiser and then when he asked for help, the officer said "no", rolled his window up and went back to reading his Kindle. So I am a bit confused. Why would the officer not speak to him but would so with the two women?
Because he was sick of
Because he was sick of getting asked what he perceived to be stupid questions such as directions to local attractions.
white privilege
Actually I thought his couching this whole thing as a statement on "how bad treatment of non-privileged people must be because I got shitty service from a cop - so you can only imagine how I would have been treated were I black or an immigrant", was kind of annoying.
If indeed the cop rolled up his window without any clue as to whether there was a real emergency or serious problem, then yes, he's a dick and this makes a great blog post. On the other hand if in fact there was a bit more to the story than we have been told here, then it could be the cop figured the over-educated guy with the dog and missing letter could work things out on his own, seeing how he's got all this privilege (just not particularly careful when it comes to letters).
Jeez, what a conundrum...do I give in to my predisposition to not particularly like cops or not particularly like over-educated, white, privileged people who like to talk about their white privilege...? Maybe I'll just get a beer...the weather's crap.
Yes, a beer sounds very good right now.
There is just something, well, disturbing me about the guy's entire post (including what you picked up on). I just can't put my finger on it. Like why does he refer to his dog as "Maggie the Therapy Dog" instead of just "Maggie" or "my dog" and the weird line where he says that he stopped to play with a woman and her child (now, I am going to assume that "Maggie the Therapy Dog" played with the woman and the child or the woman and the child played with "Maggie the Therapy Dog* but I might be wrong). And how big was the envelope stuffed in his pocket that it fell out? I mean, why would you stuff a large envelope in your pocket if it is not secure?
*Please note that this is not an attack on the use of dogs for therapy which I advocate.
Agreed.
I was just about to write something similar...
Spinning this encounter with an unhelpful cop into a diatribe on white privilege in America was a bit of an overindulgent leap... and more than "kind of" annoying. I would have just gone with ANNOYING.
wow. we have this saying in
wow.
we have this saying in the netherlands: the police is your best friend....
...
on weeeeed?
Fortunately I don't have much
Fortunately I don't have much experience dealing with police. But on several memorable occasions, I've seen Cambridge police being very rude and hostile when it totally wasn't warranted.
Once or twice I considered making an issue out of it. But I decided not to, since police do things much worse than simple rudeness all the time.
a bit of a weiner
I'm sorry but after reading this guys blog, i did find it a little bit prejudiced and also self-pitying.
1. he talks about his childhood and police used to be great and blablabla. Sorry but personal experience then and now does not equate good data, ergo, im sure there were some asshole cops back in the day just like there are now.
2. he was prejudiced against the cop: he says oh god, I was lucky i was the "epitome of white power" (whatever that means), just imagine if i'd been an uneducated black male in my twenties!). Well pall, i think those guys wouldnt start whining to a cop over a lost envelope, and you have no reason to believe this cop was a racist. To the contrary, the fact that he disrespected this person (who clearly views himself as superior, judging from his mentioning he has a doctorate (really? was he holding a sign?) points more in the opposite direction: this cop does not discriminate at all in choosign who to be a dick to; he does it even if you have two masters and a doctorate.
Really?
I also personally found this guy annoying for similar reasons that others have mentioned, but I think he has a really valid point. I think it's legitimate to check your privilege when stuff like this happens.
If this guy considers it an outrage that a cop said "no" and left when he asked for help, he indeed has a lot of privilege, because he isn't someone who routinely has cops stopping and questioning him, thus would never consider voluntarily interacting with one. I actually appreciate that he acknowledged his privilege here, even if I could stand to lose the self-important tone of his blog.
wtf?
is a red boy? is that a clash song?
Masshole
Yet again, the Massholes strike.
My goodness!!
If only our intrepid hero had taken the time to list his accomplishments and degrees, the cop might have taken the time to tell him to go fuck himself.
"I was the epitome of white privilege and power."
No, you're not. You're an pompous asshole. Glad he's not my shrink.
Did you read the whole
Did you read the whole paragraph for the context of that statement? Or are you being an obtuse jerk on purpose?
Of course!
You think I would make a statement about Dr. Fünke without taking the time to read the narcissistic rantings about his imagined "power"?
What power might the good Doctor posess? The power to part water? Heal the sick with a wave of his hand? And how about that website? While most mental health professionals I've encountered in my 50 years would list their academic or medical credentials on their sites, this egotist has 2 blogs, a webpage, his Skype number, his Twitter feed, his LinkedIn page and his Google Plus accounts listed. Of course, what mental health professional's website would be complete without a page for his press clippings?
Seems to me he spends more time involved in his own social media than his actual practice. Fuck him and his overdeveloped sense of privilege.
but WHAT was in the
but WHAT was in the envelope??! hope nothing about his patients...
ah well, probably with his 2 masters, a doctorate and being white, he knows the HIPAA privacy rules...
HIPAA?
What would be contained in "an envelope of banking material" that would violate HIPAA?