Thursday, February 02, 2006
A glance inside the friendly shell of a police station
Apparently 2,100 bikes are stolen in Oxford every year. Mine was the 15th to be recovered this year, and I’ve just been down to give a statement about the theft. I don’t often feel so white. Every person I saw working there was white, I was there looking relaxed and dressed conservatively, like I was with them. Everyone who seemed to be there without wanting to be was non-white, all dressed in sports-type clothing; I swear if everybody were evacuated for a fire, you’d still know exactly who was on which side of the law in there. I felt so bloody white.
There was a man there as well, trying to sort out with the receptionist something to do with whether his son had missed a parole appointment or something, and whether his son was going to be liable for arrest whilst it got sorted out. He was saying how he wanted to carry on dealing with it with her rather than some alternative that involved police officers, because then he would get into an argument with them and get upset, and then get arrested for “whatever you call it”. This statement seemed to imply both that it was their rules, not to do with him, and also that it was a matter of police discretion whereby police could call whatever they wanted whatever they wanted, if he annoyed them. The thing that really struck me, was that whilst saying all this, he remained polite whilst obviously het up, but was leaning forward completely over her counter, right into her face, with his athletic 6-foot frame, creating completely aggressive body language. It was just the completely wrong way to deal with anyone, sending out so many signals of confrontation, anger, and potential violence, to the person with whom he was talking. I so wanted to explain to him what he was doing, and the difference that could be made simply by giving off less intimidatory and even friendly signals. It would have been a simple matter of changing his body language by about 20° to the vertical, which would have completely changed the situation. The lady was admirably reasonable and helpful to him, but anyone who wasn’t taking such an attitude of being nice no matter what would have ended up fighting with him. Anyway, it probably would have felt rude and patronising, and it was in front of his son. I waited and then I went in and chatted jovially with this police officer dealing with my bike. He was a nice man.
My bike was found by a police officer confiscating it from a lad he knew to have a record, and then the frame number matched the database. Apparently it’s very usual for people to bring in bikes to be certified as not stolen (in order to sell them to second-hand shops) and then for them to match the database, incriminating the people.
Catching and punishing hardly covers it; people don’t necessarily know the straight and narrow in order to choose it. This is social.
There was a man there as well, trying to sort out with the receptionist something to do with whether his son had missed a parole appointment or something, and whether his son was going to be liable for arrest whilst it got sorted out. He was saying how he wanted to carry on dealing with it with her rather than some alternative that involved police officers, because then he would get into an argument with them and get upset, and then get arrested for “whatever you call it”. This statement seemed to imply both that it was their rules, not to do with him, and also that it was a matter of police discretion whereby police could call whatever they wanted whatever they wanted, if he annoyed them. The thing that really struck me, was that whilst saying all this, he remained polite whilst obviously het up, but was leaning forward completely over her counter, right into her face, with his athletic 6-foot frame, creating completely aggressive body language. It was just the completely wrong way to deal with anyone, sending out so many signals of confrontation, anger, and potential violence, to the person with whom he was talking. I so wanted to explain to him what he was doing, and the difference that could be made simply by giving off less intimidatory and even friendly signals. It would have been a simple matter of changing his body language by about 20° to the vertical, which would have completely changed the situation. The lady was admirably reasonable and helpful to him, but anyone who wasn’t taking such an attitude of being nice no matter what would have ended up fighting with him. Anyway, it probably would have felt rude and patronising, and it was in front of his son. I waited and then I went in and chatted jovially with this police officer dealing with my bike. He was a nice man.
My bike was found by a police officer confiscating it from a lad he knew to have a record, and then the frame number matched the database. Apparently it’s very usual for people to bring in bikes to be certified as not stolen (in order to sell them to second-hand shops) and then for them to match the database, incriminating the people.
Catching and punishing hardly covers it; people don’t necessarily know the straight and narrow in order to choose it. This is social.
