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Wednesday, August 21, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
Can I get a
witness?
With all due respect
to Sgt. Bailey and the
Deschutes County Sheriff9s
Office, whose service and
dedication to professional-
ism are both real and deeply
appreciated by this space,
the advice to citizens to
stand back and <be a good
witness= in the face of crime
is ultimately damaging to a
community.
The <be a good witness=
meme has been all the rage in
law enforcement circles for
several decades, and there
are some solid reasons for
it. Overzealous citizens who
don9t understand the law, or
their rights and duties, have
caused serious problems for
law enforcement, and occa-
sionally themselves. They
have been shot, mistakenly
arrested, beaten up by sus-
pects, murdered by suspects,
and sometimes take action
when there is, in fact, no
crime.
The specter of civil
and criminal liability for
addressing any crime is real,
and potentially devastating
for both citizens and law
enforcement professionals
alike.
All of those are solid
reasons to sit back and be
a good witness, and it is
the same advice that many
departments give to off-duty
officers who find themselves
in a position to intercede or
prevent crimes in progress.
Nothing is worse 4 and
it has happened more than
once 4 than when arriving
officers shoot an off-duty
officer because he was carry-
ing a gun in civilian clothes
and failed to properly iden-
tify himself.
But the <good witness=
premise is flawed on a num-
ber of levels. The first of
those is the implicit embrace
of the nanny-state, which
encourages weakness in law-
abiding citizens by caus-
ing them to fear virtually
everything, and particularly
the right and responsibil-
ity to confront our nation9s
growing multitude of utter
scumbags.
The flipside is that crimi-
nals, particularly those packs
of malicious young criminals
and mischief-makers who
have yet to be sufficiently
thumped by life 4 and
generally have little or no
respect for much of anything
4 are emboldened to devi-
ance every time law-abiding
citizens walk away, or make
the very funny threat (usu-
ally while showing them
their cell-phone) to call the
cops.
Turning everything over
to the government also adds
to the erosion of our rights
as free citizens. As a citizen
you have the legal right to
detain someone suspected of
a crime. You have the right
to do that using the same
use of force continuum that
law enforcement does. But
for years citizens have been
asked to dumb themselves
down, act like sheep, and let
criminals run over the top
of them while waiting to be
rescued.
There are actually people
in this country who would
like you to allow criminals
into your house to steal your
stuff and abuse your loved
ones while you hide in a cry-
closet frantically dialing 911.
No, thanks.
Being a good witness
really boils down to some
essential ingredients, which
a surprising number of
adults are incapable of cook-
ing with, particularly when
talking to a dispatcher under
conditions approaching
stress.
First, is what you are see-
ing actually a crime? Some
knowledge of the law 4
which many people think
they have and actually don9t
4 is probably important.
Second, get a description of
the suspect 4 what are they
wearing, how old are they,
are they white, black, Asian,
Hispanic? That isn9t profil-
ing, by the way, it9s being a
<good witness,= and details
matter. Which direction are
they travelling? Are they on
foot, a bicycle, or driving a
car? What does the vehicle
look like? Can you read the
plate? Even a partial plate
number can be helpful. And
after all of that good wit-
nessing, please stand around
sucking your thumb until
a deputy arrives, by which
time everything will prob-
ably be over.
Insisting that citizens
yield their rights, and one of
the feature responsibilities
of being an adult 4 involve-
ment in the protection of
their community 4 to
merely witnessing crime is
absurd. The <don9t approach,
d o n 9t e n g a g e o r g e t
involved= advice is fine for
children, but not for adults.
That is precisely how crimi-
nals and mischief-makers
take over a neighborhood,
then a town, and eventually
a criminal justice system.
And that9s particularly true
in a town like ours, which
is severely under-patrolled,
particularly during the sum-
mer months when hordes of
people descend on Sisters
from who-knows-where.
The dearth of patrols in
our city 4 and a rapidly
growing city means rapidly
growing criminal behav-
ior 4 is likely a staffing
issue, and isn9t entirely
the Sheriff9s fault. Sheriff
Nelson would, beyond a
doubt, love to throw a ton
of deputies at Sisters9 bur-
geoning criminal problems,
and no law enforcement
officer worth the weight of
their badge wants their beat
to suffer any crime at all, let
alone a spree committed by a
small number of delinquents.
In law enforcement, as
in the rest of life, squeaky
wheels always get the
grease, and if the people in
this town want more patrols,
they better start squawk-
ing and wobbling 4 loudly
and frequently 4 like the
bad wheel on a shopping
cart. They should probably
demand that the City Council
pony up some more money
to get full-time deputies
here, particularly through the
peak tourism months.
Citizens of this town,
or any other, who are seri-
ous about preventing crime
should also attend a citi-
zen9s academy, learn some-
thing about the law, their
rights and responsibilities,
and make their own choice
between merely witness-
ing, or taking meaningful,
responsible action to deter,
interrupt, or prevent criminal
behavior in our community.
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