Opinion - Columns - Kathe Tanner

Published: Thursday, Aug. 06, 2009

A ticket to empathy

Mumbling to a cop

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Through my journalistic years, I’ve developed cordial working relationships with most North Coast cops (an informal term that encompasses all law-enforcement officials, from police and highway patrol officers to sheriff’s deputies, fish and game wardens, state park rangers and others who work to keep us honest and keep us safe).

I understand how difficult it is to enforce the laws. I’m often in the field with cops, covering the story while they do their often heart-wrenching and dangerous jobs.

Most law enforcers have my devout respect and some I consider friends. However, a few cops are rogues, too enamored with their own power to use it wisely.

So, when I read the story about how a Cambridge, Mass., policeman arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, I was upset on Gates’ behalf, but wondered about extenuating circumstances.

A well-known, respected educator who walks with a cane and could prove who he was doesn’t seem a likely candidate to be a burglarizing his own home. But I wasn’t there. I don’t know if the professor became verbally abusive or out of control. I don’t know if the policeman was polite or unnecessarily harsh, or if his report was accurate.

As the national debate swirled and we learned the cop’s history of teaching others how to avoid racial profiling, I leaned toward a middle-of-the-road opinion: Prof. Gates had a right to be angry, if he sensed he was being considered a criminal rather than a locked-out property owner trying to get into his own residence. The policeman had a right to react strongly if the professor was being uncontrollably belligerent or endangering himself or others.

Maybe everybody reacted somewhat badly, I rationalized. We’ve all done it, and it never happens at a good time. I could imagine myself wearing either pair of shoes, and I might have reacted well or not so well in each case.

Of course, I’m neither a black man nor a white policeman arresting him, so any such image I could conjure up is only an educated guess.

Then I got a speeding ticket, my first in many decades. And I felt first-hand how it feels to be on the receiving end of law enforcement.

I had been driving a rental car on Los Osos Valley Road, trying for the first time to set a peculiarly placed cruise control. Unfortunately, to figure out a cruise-control device, the vehicle has to be moving.

It seemed, no matter which way I pushed the lever below the steering wheel, the van speeded up.

As soon as I realized I was going too fast, I fumbled around, managed to finally turn the control off and began to slow down the van. Then I saw the patrol car parked on the other side of the road. Soon thereafter, the officer flipped a U-turn and had his red lights flashing.

I pulled over. I tried explaining that I was driving a rental car. I said I’d been trying to set the cruise control for the first time.

Even though I’m a trained public speaker who spent years as a radio performer, I wound up stammering and stuttering. I felt (and probably sounded) very defensive. The words didn’t come out right, and I’m sure the cop didn’t believe me.

He wrote the ticket. He was polite, but I found myself illogically resenting his authority. He hadn’t done anything wrong. And while I didn’t think I had, either, the law could see it differently.

Yes, I deal with law-enforcement officials all the time. But this time, I was the one on the hot seat.

I could go to court and try to explain the situation to a judge. No, I don’t think I will. I’ll probably pay the fine and take the online course to wipe it off my record.

I’m sure talking to a judge is far worse than talking to a lawman, and I didn’t do very well at the latter. Maybe Prof. Gates did go too far. But perhaps I now understand better why that may have happened.