The Berkshire Eagle
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Mercy! There seems to be a lot of criticism of law enforcement in these pages these days.
I have to admit I don’t share that sentiment. If that makes me a part of the “Good Ol’ Boy” network, that’s OK. It may be true. I don’t think the police got the memo, though. My last speeding ticket cost me $450.
Anyway, I’ve been arrested, I’ve been booked, I’ve been in jail. But never when I didn’t deserve it. And what it’s done, in my case, is made me aware that I don’t want it to happen again.
So the operative plan is to stay under the radar screen. Keep up-to-date on your license, your registration, etc.
There are times when this has not been true, obviously. I’ve had my car towed -- several times. And this is why you should keep this column with you at all times: If you’re going to get your car towed, state and local police officers don’t care where your car goes. So when one gets into a situation where one’s car is going to be towed, don’t negotiate with the officer. Negotiate with the tow guy.
Take it from me: For a price, the tow guy will tow your car to your house, or your friend’s house, or wherever you want to go. If you blow him off, yeah, he’ll probably take it to his yard. And then you’ll have to pay a storage fee. But if you work it out with the tow man, you can usually get that part of the issue out of the way. For what it’s worth.
Similarly, I understand how people might decry what they see as a waste of resources when there’s a situation like the one that happened downtown this past summer. Police were alerted to a man with a gun in a woman’s apartment. It turned out to be untrue, and the woman was one of two people charged with defrauding the city.
Yes, in terms of the response and the circumstances, it probably felt like an overreaction. But I was there, 17 years ago, the one time it wasn’t.
That was in Great Barrington, in 1995, at Simon’s Rock College of Bard. A student, Wayne Lo, shot up the campus with a semi-automatic rifle.
With all due respect to the horrific triple-murder that took place involving Pittsfield residents earlier this year, those crooks were cupcakes compared to Lo. He shot everything that moved that night, and some of those people survived, and some did not. His motive? None, really. He just wanted to kill people.
I don’t think anyone who has not seen combat can understand how frightening that campus was that night. The guardhouse at the entrance of the school looked like a slaughterhouse. A car was parked, sort of, on the side of the road. The driver had also been shot and killed.
And our local officers did their job. They went in and got the guy. True, Lo had stopped shooting because the rifle jammed. But the police didn’t know that. As far as they knew, he was somewhere on campus, waiting for them. With a rifle. They had pistols.
So yeah, I tend to favor cops. I also don’t expect to get a break on my next speeding ticket.
Copyright 2012 New England Newspaper Group Inc.