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They Called the Police on Me Because of COVID-19 Restrictions
On Sunday, I went to the town transfer station (the dump) to dispose of some old boards that I had loaded into my trailer. The station’s supervisor called the police on me. I do not appreciate being treated like a criminal for going to the transfer station.
I drove into the transfer station and waited for the supervisor to come over to my car, and I asked him where I should put the boards, most of which were half rotten. He said they were not taking construction debris (“CD”) anymore. I asked if I should put the boards in the household trash compactor in that case. He said no, I would have to go home. I suggested that since my debris was all natural wood I could dispose of it in the brush pile. He grew exasperated and asked me, “why do you have to be like this?” And told me I could not leave the boards anywhere. I was also exasperated, and hyperbolically said I wasn’t leaving without putting the boards in either the open CD containers, the compactor, or the brush pile, and asked what was he going to do about it. He called the police.
I stayed and waited for the police officer to arrive because I didn’t want him to think, or me to feel like, I had “fled the scene.” To be honest, I don’t think anyone has ever called the police on me before and I was confused how to act, especially because I don’t view going to the transfer station as nefarious.
To be clear, my grievance is not with the supervisor or the police officer. And I told that to them both and I believe that we were OK by the time I left.
My problem is with the town’s board of selectmen. The board has arbitrarily and capriciously ordered that the transfer station not take CD. The reason the supervisor gave me for this decision was, to paraphrase slightly, “to maintain distancing and protect us [the employees] and you [the townspeople] from infection.”
This makes no logical sense. The CD containers are outside and there’s no reason to come within 50 feet of another person when unloading your trailer. It’s the compactor for household trash where you’re much more likely to come close to another person. Yet the household trash compactors (also outdoors) remain open for use. In fact, while I was speaking to the supervisor and the police officer I observed numerous town residents coming in close proximity with each other and with transfer station employees. I pointed this out and the police officer told me that the distancing guidelines are optional. So the guidelines are optional at the compactor but not the CD containers? This is maddening.
Do we really want to live in a society where you have the police called on you for going to the transfer station? (Even if you get angry and say something slightly bombastic but don’t actually start chucking wood off your trailer in the middle of the parking lot?) It wasn’t exactly fun to stand there being confronted by an armed police officer while countless fellow town residents drove by, assuming who knows what about the reasons I appeared to be under interrogation. The police officer is very professional, but let’s be honest: When the police are called, the threat of arrest (loss of liberty) is always present. We have all seen the videos from across the nation of people being arrested for no good reason: for paddle-boarding alone in the ocean, for letting their children play on a playground, for playing catch with their daughter in a park, for sitting on the beach.
It’s time to fully reopen the transfer station, the rest of the town, our states, and our country.
Published in General
Any time a person with a gun shows up, things could go to poop. So, it’s important to limit the petty, BS rules. I think most police don’t bother with the petty BS and only show up when called. Some times when a knucklehead with a gun confronts a knucklehead on the wrong side of some petty BS, things go sideways in a hurry. Like the can’t breath guy who ended up dead over loosies. The penalty for being a knucklehead isn’t death but sometimes that’s how it works out.
Our local “recycling center” (dump) has been closed since this whole thing started, apparently the employees refused to work because they didn’t “feel safe”.
It’s finally resuming normal hours this Tuesday, which is good because I have four or five garbage cans full of rocks, yard waste and other spring cleanup to get rid of, plus a bunch of dirt and rocks I haven’t been able to pick up yet because I have no place to put it.
These are not without reason. City taxes have suffered from this shutdown, but the police can provide an independent income stream.
That’s a good point. They’re not ticketing speeders anymore, since nobody is traveling, so a huge source of revenue has dried up. They gotta make it up somehow. So they’re harassing people who are minding their own business.
Wow. Maybe go into politics. Or talk someone else into it.
Or move. Lot’s of vacancies opening up in New York, I hear.
I think some of these folks just like to feel important….Barney Fife Syndrome.
I’ve been calling this The Great American Spring Cleaning. :-) Today there was a long line to get into our waste and recycling and composting areas too. :-)
Not that it is a big deal, but it’s kind of funny that it happened to Max–that isn’t my quote. :-) :-)
Ricochet clearly has a serious problem with its vetting procedures when a hardened criminal like Max can move directly from a life of crime into Ricochet’s supposedly secure servers. How did this felon get a security clearance?
Relax… Karen.
(Or is that Doctor Karen?)
Sorry for your experience Max. Your post brings up an issue I have been thinking about quite a bit lately and other commenters have alluded to. I exercise every morning and take a long walk in the evenings. I live in a relatively populated area and I try my best to observe the 6-foot standard, give people a wide berth and greet people courteously. However, from a small percentage of people, I still get dirty looks and grumbling comments. And to the chagrin of my wife, I very respectfully, but firmly, always confront those grumbles with a standard, “you have no more right to this patch of ground than I do. So the only thing we’re negotiating here is how to courteously move around each other during a difficult time.”
My contention is that those people who grumble and act as though they have some sort of permanent right-of-way wherever they go (or in your case, call the police over a trivial issue), were already self-centered and rude in the first place. The quarantine, and resulting rules, just enhance those negative qualities in certain people that were already present.
You ask the relevant rhetorical question: “Do we really want to live in a society where you have the police called on you for going to the transfer station?”
If we agree that the answer is no, then we have an obligation to politely, but firmly, push back against it. Unfortunately in your case, this may require an uncomfortable call-out and questioning by the police. Like @eodmom, I have repeatedly called and emailed our mayor and board of supervisors during this time to request timetables and reasoning behind certain local rules that don’t seem to be supported by evidence. Of course I am largely ignored and I am most likely engaged in a Sisyphean endeavor, but as my mother used to remind me and my siblings, “if not you, who?” At the end of the day, our Constitution and Bill of Rights only protect us if we actively invoke them, even if in a small way. And while we are not exactly at the Battle of Antietam, if we believe what I think most of us here believe, then we must call these petty instances of local overreach out. And good on you for doing it.
It sounds as though this supervisor has weaponized the new rule put in place by your board. Would he have called the police absent the quarantine? Doubtful.
You wrote:
“The board has arbitrarily and capriciously ordered that the transfer station not take CD. The reason the supervisor gave me for this decision was, to paraphrase slightly, “to maintain distancing and protect us [the employees] and you [the townspeople] from infection.”
Have you contacted your local board about this incident? If so, have you received a response?
You wrote:
“It’s time to fully reopen the transfer station, the rest of the town, our states, and our country.”
AMEN.
🤣😖
We had 2 transfer station runs in the last 2 weeks for debris from a project I’ve been working on. No issues at all here in Ohio – such places are considered essential.
Have you considered running against any of your town’s selectmen?
I’ve always suspected he was Group W material.
“The hell you say!” is a fine political slogan – it worked for Clint Eastwood.
As Jim Geraghty wrote last fall, we’re not exporting our values to China, we’re importing theirs.
[continued below]
You say, “poking the bear”.
I say, “Refusing to join the agentic state.”
Continued from #46
This became known as “free trade.”
As Andrew Breitbart observed, politics is downstream from culture. So,
Like them culturally, which is not surprising since our organs of culture are kowtowing to China. But as David P Goldman noted, not like them educationally:
and “tens of thousands of American-educated [Chinese] doctoral candidates” brought China up to US levels in most STEM fields.
We have trained our replacements.
You think the rapid and unimpeded rise of the arbitrary and over-powered administrative state is bad now, just you wait! In 2025, you may well not survive your encounter with the Rapid Response team from President Ocasio-Cortez’s newly created Department of Equity, 3 minutes after you happen to publicly misgender someone.
Probably a letter of recommendation from Senator Feinstein for his work as her driver.😛
Concur
That would be a terrific outcome!
I do not disagree, at all.
Did anyone confirm the letter with the senator’s office? Did they even check the signature? Maybe he was swanning about with Dana Feinstein the shelver from the Library of Congress.
The man was obeying the law. The law was made by people voted for by the citizens. Why are you giving the man a hard time? Take your stupid boards back home and wait like everyone else. That’s a pretty lame place to practice civil disobedience.
The time and place to fix this is at the ballot box. Sometimes you need to take extreme measures to resist oppression, this wasn’t it. Leave the poor man alone, follow the law and stop wasting police time.
I was thinking along the same lines. I tend to be a little more direct and less polite. The Barney and one bullet references, stunk of elitism and I found them offensive.
But if they’re not actually issuing citations, or putting people in jail and requiring bail, there’s no money in it.
Max didn’t call the police.
We have more ways than that to try for redress of grievances. A system that’s limited to the ballot box is almost a tyranny already.
I think civil disobedience was perfectly appropriate in this case, especially since it sounds like Max was, well, civil the entire time.
Your point about the ballot box would usually be valid, except that nobody envisioned this current scenario at the last election, and by the time the next election/inauguration cycle is complete a lot of damage may have already been done.
While the precise issue at hand might be fairly trivial, we’ve seen lots of communities enact hundreds of restrictions that have next-to-zero basis in epidemiology or public health (or at best are almost certainly very minor modes of viral transmission). While each one of these restrictions by itself might seem to petty to disobey, in total they’ve imposed a dramatic burden on top of the basic “social distancing” mandate for little practical benefit.