Re: Selective Enforcement Not True

[ltrwritr@moscow.com (Mark Rounds)]

John

I appreciate that you are taking time to hear what is being said.  I will
keep my comments brief since I too have a life ;-)

I disagree with the following statement you made: " Biased enforcement is
not the result of the laws written, but rather the individuals in the
system."  I disagree in that how the law is written can determine how much
selective enforcement is needed.  Chatting with some of my friends in the
law enforcement community, they are of a mind that selective enforcement is
the what is resorted to if a law is unclear and vague.   It is clear to me
and apparently to others on this list that this ordinance as written will
require a great deal of selective enforcement that could be avoided by
properly crafting the law.  

In my view, this law will put an onerous amount of decision making on the
part of the cop on the street.  I have met and chatted with several of them
over the years here in Moscow, and I have found them to be good and
honorable people, but every department has a bottom 10% and without careful
wording, some folks with an axe to grind or just having a bad day will
violate your intent without violating the law.  You can't eleminate the
potentiality to use any ordinance in a biased and unfair manner but you can
certainly restrict it and this is where I think this ordinance falls down.

However, I think time has come for us to evalute what we are doing.  That
requires that we think about the goal of this ordinance and not the specific
wording.  I have asked if I could have that from the folks on the council in
this forum and haven't recieved it.  I am not pointing finger as ther are a
lot of posts here.  What I am saying is let's not forget the the goal
because we are tied to a specific set of words.  

I beleive that a non-gender specific ordiance can be drafted that restricts
the amount of selective enforcement, focuses on the behaviors that we would
all like to see not repeated, and let us all get on with life.  It means
that both sides of this discussion will have to give a bit and compromise.
I don't think that is too much to ask.  

I am put in mind of an incident that happened to me as a young man.  My
uncle owned the cement yard in the town I grew up and the summer I turned
15, both my father and my uncle thought it would be a good idea for me to
have a job and so I was junior assistant flunky in the cement yard.  At one
point, my uncle was filling out some tax forms and told me to go out in the
yard and get all the VIN's and corresponding serial numbers and license
numbers.  I grabbed pencil without and eraser and a pad and headed for the
door.  

My uncle shouted at me to grab a pencil with an eraser and I quipped back
that I wasn't going to make any mistakes so I didn't need one.  Dumb answer
;-)  He took me aside and in language that would be unfit to relate here,
told me that if I wasn't making mistakes, I wasn't working hard enough or
fast enough.  The man made an lost 2 fortumes in his life and then hit upon
the deal that made him rish for the rest of his life.  You may have heard of
it, it was called the automatic carwash.  I have taken this lesson to heart
many times and am offering to all of you now.

The City Council, in my view was not sluffing off or being negligent.  They
were working hard and IMHO made an error.  Now before too many egos get tied
up in this and before people say any more things they can't take back, can
we please look at it in that light, make some compromises and still acheive
the goal which is an ordinance that will allow the police to shut down
operations like the roving topless carwash without infringing on the other
issues mentioned here?  

The flip side of this, of course, is to do nothing.  But remember that this
town and the folsk within it, have a tendancy to stand up for themselves
when they think they have been wronged.  They did it when the County Board
voted themselves a raise on the sly, they did it when the school district
tried to slip a bond levy by without properly communicating and they are
very likely to sign a petition that will bring this up for a vote.  There
will be rallies both pro and con, a significant number of women and men who
will forego where shirts as a statement of where they stand and it is all so
unneeded.  

Everybody take three deep breaths, think about the course you are about to
embark on and then think if there isn't a compromise that can be struck.
This will mean a rewrite of the ordinance but those are just words, it isn't
the reason they were put forward in the first place.  

Start by thinking on what you really want to accomplish and then
communicating it.  What is the goal of this exercise?  Ask that question and
agree on it and the rest will be a lot easier.  This rattled on a lot longer
than I intended.  My apologies to one and all for that.

Mark Rounds

At 07:20 AM 7/22/2002 -0700, John Guyer wrote:
>Greetings All,
>
>I will say from the get go, that my time is shorter than usual this week
>so I will not be able to answer the many posts here.
>
>For those that I have been having private dialog, I will have to ask you
>to be patient as well.
>
>It has been bantered around that the council favors selective
>enforcement with the public nudity ordinance amendments.  This is one of
>the reasons that is being cited to oppose the ordinance.
>
>While I cannot speak for the council, I can say that I believe that to
>be completely false.  Laws are crafted to be clear.  This law is no
>different than others in that regard.
>
>Someone that parks their utility trailer or boat on the street without
>having it connected to a vehicle has committed a misdemeanor.  The
>maximum penalty for leaving your trailer in the street is the same as
>that for violating the Public Nudity ordinance.  This "trailer law" has
>intent with it that the entire system (officers, attorneys, and judges)
>utilizes in making decisions about how to justly deal with the offense.
>Did they mean 10 minutes while they switch vehicles?  Did they mean
>overnight while waiting to take it out?  Did they mean all the way in
>the street, or just partially in the street? 
>
>Human discretion is a required element of law enforcement, adjudication,
>and sentencing.  Lady justice IS blind, but not Judge Dredd blind.
>Justice means the right response to the right situation.  There is a
>range of responses that the entire system can make along the way from
>the officer in the street to the judge on the bench.  I cannot believe
>you want a rigid response to every offense.  Where is the community
>served in that?
>
>If your concern is about BIASED enforcement, then I agree with you, that
>that is bad.  Biased enforcement is not the result of the laws written,
>but rather the individuals in the system.
>
>Take care,
>
>John B. Guyer
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>johnguy@moscow.com
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