This life is a twisted one. One piece of evidence to this effect is the unintended result of my having to count collection agencies amongst the readers of my posts here on Words From. It may stem from the fact that I have so much debt. It may be that my warped mind produces material that is perfectly suited for their warped minds. Whatever the reason, they’re here to stay.

Way back on December 19th I wrote a little piece called “These Collection Hounds” in which I detailed some of my personal encounters with collectors and proposed that the Police in our capitalist, market-driven economy actually work for big business. I am just as sure of this today as I was back in December. Our police forces in this great and wealthy nation wind up working primarily for corporate interests — interests that trump those of the average citizen — whether intended by our system or not.

In that last article back in December I discussed one event in which a member of the Sheriff’s Office from the county where the collector was located called me and ordered me to stop calling the collector but refused to order the collector to stop calling me. This was only a small piece in the puzzle for the entrenchment of my theory regarding business and law. In that case, I did in fact owe the collector money (or rather, my wife did) so they actually had a legitimate reason to call, in the beginning. By the end of the whole affair I think I was in the right however, because I stood up for the rights of an individual over those of a corporate entity.

I was reading that December post of mine this morning because, once again, a collector had stopped by my blog and offered me their gratitude for the “informative” piece on collectors as they were able to “relate to [it] very well.” It’s as if somehow, without intending to mind you, I had created a written piece that my enemy was relating to. Woe is me! But this got the silk covered (think spiders) cogs of my mind turning once more. At least these people are reading this stuff! Maybe I can convert a few of the evil minion!

So I would like to offer another example of police working first for business, and for the people only when it suits them. It is a story that I believe I had meant to include in that original post back in December. Apparently I left it out either because of the overall length of the piece or because I got so worked up writing what I already had that it got pushed to the side of my cognitive railroad to make way for a runaway locomotive. But today is another day, and so here we go.

Roughly one year ago I was working for a local rental company, American Rental Specialties. We had just about everything under the sun available to rent but specialized in the delivery, installation, and subsequent removal of giant tents for large, outdoor events. As you might imagine we maintained a small fleet of trucks for our deliveries and therefore consumed quite a bit of fuel. Because there was no fence around our parking area, the trucks were frequent targets of local gas thieves.

They would come at night, pulling into our alley with sliced garden hoses in hand, and hit us so fast that they never got caught. They would only take a few gallons, not enough to be noticed — except that we had noticed. Jim, the owner of the company, was a retired Air Force pilot and had a mentality similar to my own in that he loved a good mystery and liked being in the thick of the action even better. So he installed a night vision camera to catch the thieves.

Every morning would start the same way after that. We would all huddle around the monitor as Jim watched the tapes from the previous night at high speed. It was pitch black, mostly. Even low-light cameras need some light to function, and there just wasn’t any in that alley. Every now and then a set of headlights would ignite the screen like a nuclear blast and then fade into the distance as the vehicle they belonged to drove past without stopping.

At one point a car drove slowly behind the trucks, but never stopped as it followed the neighboring building’s loading docks, circling back out to the main alley and then leaving the camera’s view all together. Jim was convinced that this was the culprit. He thought that maybe a passenger got out and siphoned the gas out of our trucks while the driver kept moving so as to trick anyone who might be reviewing the tapes.

I wasn’t so sure that they would know they were being video taped. As Jim pressed the rewind button over and over again in search of some clue about the car’s identity or activities, I noticed something that blew his theory completely out of the water. The driver’s side door bore the emblem of a local security company. They weren’t thieves, they were on patrol against the thieves. This brought a whole new dimension of difficulty to our goal of catching the guilty. There was a nightly security patrol and they still had never been caught. These guys were good at what they did.

To make a long story short, Jim eventually gave up on his camera and decided to call the police. And here, my readers, is where the story takes a relevant turn. At that time in my life I had recently dealt with the police on an issue regarding my housing. I had contacted them with the intent of making an official statement regarding my neighbor who was knowingly filing false reports against my animal in order to get me evicted.

She rented from the same company that I did and knew that three animal complaints was grounds for eviction according to our leases. Eventually she succeeded at her attempts to have my family and I removed from that home. Before things had gotten that far I made my attempt to file a complaint against her because, and correct me if I am wrong, filing false reports to government agencies is a crime. But the PD wouldn’t even let me file a complaint or make a statement.

First they tried to pass me off to the Sheriff’s Office, but the SO passed me back to them. Then they just copped out altogether (perhaps this is the origin of the term?) and told me that my problem was a civil matter and that I would have to take my neighbor to court if I wanted anything done about it. Except that, and I tried to explain this to the officers, if I went to court I would need documentation that I was aware of and attempted to do something about the false nature of her reports. If I appeared in court with no evidence to support my claim, and it looked as though I had done nothing about the situation until then, it would only hurt my case. Their response?”

“Yep. I know. I’m sorry.”

Getting back to the gas heists, I warned Jim that the Police weren’t going to care about his gas problem because they weren’t interested in protecting people, only in generating revenue by way of fines and enforcement. But he placed his call anyway. To my surprise the PD offered not only to take his statement, but to place two officers on stakeout in that alley to catch the thieves once and for all. Can you believe it, two officers on stakeout? What gives? The only obvious difference here was that Jim represented a business interest — and therefore revenue in the local economy — and I represented…well, me.

In my book, this should be criminal in and of itself, but of course it is not. Here in America the almighty dollar is, well, all mighty. Nothing in our nation trumps profit, including our liberties, our laws, and our legacies. People, you are not as free as you think. Isn’t it time that we all woke up from our mass consumerism and started to focus on the issues that are really important to the one resource in this country that is not completely expendable — We, The People?

JMK