Poliţia De Proximitate
To set the context, I should admit as background material that I’ve never really been comfortable with police in the United States. It may come as a surprise to some Europeans to learn that the typical American does have a healthy distrust for our police force.
We tend to characterize them as either lazy pusharounds sitting in their expensive squad cars all day with only enough effort required to munch down some papanaşi or else as overbearing, testosterone-hopped meddlers who corruptly interfere into the private business of others just as an exercise of personal force.
It seems like they’re never in the right place at the right time. They manage to avoid all enforcement against real crime.
Instead, you end up with a kindergarten girl arrested and charged with felony, a little boy put in lockdown for 9 days, a teenage girl handcuffed for talking back, a college student arrested for writing an essay, a woman arrested over marshmallows, man arrested for wearing a t-shirt, or people being arrested for standing on a sidewalk.
Arrested.
But it’s not just that. It’s that eery experience that many cops just tend to throw their weight around. Telling people what to do when they’ve no real reason to interfere. Turning on their lights and siren in order to justify running a red-light when there is no emergency. Busting your chops during an unnecessary traffic stop.
Shocking a college student with 50,000 volts for not leaving a university library as quickly as they would have liked him to. And then threatening to shock other students for questioning the abuse.
Yeah, such trust doesn’t exactly come easy in the “land of the free.”
Let’s be balanced about it. Being a cop isn’t exactly an easy job when the rare case of actual danger rearing it’s ugly head. In those unusual moments, police have a tough set of duties to perform while trying to comply with performance regulations. The general public can certainly be some real jackaninnies.
While they deserve public respect, in theory, for helping keep order, the practical reality is disappointingly often one of ineptitude and/or malfeasance. If you combine that with how criminal records of even a minimal or errant nature can destroy your life, it’s not wise to remain blind to clear evidence of abuse.
Hence, a goodly number of intelligent Americans keep a healthy distrust for law enforcement.
I told you all that for a reason.
For once, to my surprise, I’ve actually enjoyed having police officers in Romania who walk the streets. They provide a presence that deters some uncivilized action and bolsters support for the broken window theory (hat tip: OwlSpotting).
I’ve mentioned previously how I liked having poliţia comunitara walking in the Braşov neighborhoods after dark. Sure, they look imposing with their commando-style uniforms and big weaponry, but I’ve never seen them harass a living soul.
The simple act of being seen, in the flesh, on foot, is enough to keep a variety of miscreants in order.
Additionally, I’ve mentioned how my particular neighborhood could really benefit from a minor police presence. Having a couple officers walking a beat here after dark, maybe circulating twice or so, would be enough to keep some of the bored youth from feeling free to wreak a little havoc.
(Mind you that I’m not suggesting we import stormtroopers to suppress normal human activity. No one would care for the kind of police bully tactics you see in the United States. It’s generally not necessary to randomly knock heads to keep some minimal sanity in an area.)
Meh. I’m probably just getting older. The A-G-E is having its’ way.
In Romania, or perhaps I should clarify by saying in Bucureşti, it’s very common to see pamphlets extolling the virtues of the local police force. They seem geared toward promoting a dialogue between citizens and law enforcement.
The basic thrust is to reassure you, the perhaps distrusting citizen, that local police are serving your neighborhood and are available for you should have the need. Encouraging you to dial a phone to ask for help in curbing antisocial behavior.
In the United States, I might have mocked such sentiment or even found it disturbing. But this is a different place with a different culture, different needs, and different history. Here, I find it to be something of a nice touch. An attempt to reach out and say, “no, seriously, we really are here to help.”
The kicker is there’s just a little more to it than just a simple public relations campaign waged by police to improve its’ image amongst the rank and file populace. Part of me doubts it could have possibly been that simple in Romania.
No, what could be more natural, folks, than having public service messages… paid for by a commercial entity.
But wait; there’s more!
It’s not the local pizzeria or beauty salon. Oh, no. What we really need is something more ironic. So, we’ll make sure the private company printing and distributing such fliers is perhaps even tinged with a little scent called conflict of interest. Perfect!
Yes, friends, we’ll have promotional materials for our police department paid for by… a private security company!
Why stop there when you could go much further? Put on your thinking caps and try a little harder. It won’t take too much effort to find a stunning way to further undermine the credibility of public relations campaign. All you need is a brilliant idea…
Aha, use your firm’s name to push the very envelope of irony!
May 1st, 2007 at 1:10 pm
IMO, the Bucharest police have marked a certain noticeable improvement over the years…
1994-1996: Likely to stop you and ask you for your I.D. when you stumble home under varying degrees of inebriation at 1 - 4 AM. In fact, two of them had fun stopping me in the 500 feet between my friend’s apartment and my block at 1 in the morning while carrying a big pot of soup made by his friend. Naturally, I was nervous because I didn’t yet know at that time what they did or did not do in the absence of spectators with slightly inebriated foreigners, let alone ones carting food items in the pitch dark. So I got the 2nd degree for about 10 minutes as to what I was doing in Romania and in my neighborhood. :-7
1997-2000: Likely to give you a prolonged stare, 10% chance of asking you for an I.D.
2002-present: Unlikely to even pay attention to you unless you walk by their neighborhood station during their donut break like I do. Even then, they don’t stop me…
The $64,000 question, though, is whether they’re finally getting off their duffs to do something about the neigborhood găşti of golani. Used to be you didn’t bother to call the cops about any golani, or anyone else trying to rip you off. Neighborhood security? What is this strange moon language you speak?
Which reminds me. Don’t ever, ever, ever do business with a (half-?) Armenian-Romanian asshole named “Bobi,” owner of “Acasa 2000″ out in Sector 6. That thug still owes me $150 after I came back to tell him his garsoniera was way below acceptable for me to rent it. Went so far as to threaten to cut my throat if I gave him any more crap about getting the money back, and dared me to call the Financial Police. (In retrospect, I should have…)
But, on balance, the soup was pretty damn good. :-)
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:26 am
Of course, they’re viewed with slightly more suspicion up here - being seen as a Romanian force in a Hungarian town (though we do still have the Poliţia De Proximitate ads). There are (I think) fewer than 1% ethnic Hungarians in the Romanian police force, while the general population is more like 7-8% Hungarian. I imagine the number of Rroma in the force is even less.
They’ve always been very nice to me when I’ve been going through my various residency requirements (which, for whatever reason, seems to be police business here)
May 2nd, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Andy, actually the police is trying to increase the number of Rroma in the force through some kind of affirmative action policy. I suppose that’s because they have much more trouble with their community than with the Hungarians and that speakers of Romani can solve disputes between them much easier.
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Frank - That’s a fantastic breakdown and readily believable (not just due to the absence of a legion of contrarian comments from locals). So, then, the soup got cold or you shared it with the officers? It’s something of a zany premise anyway which makes one wonder just what in the world y’all were up to in the middle of the night…
At least it wasn’t curry.
I’d agree with your description of unlikely to pay attention to you. Oh, they might look a little, but it’s no more than the average pedestrian might do when encountering an obvious foreigner. Amazingly, I actually saw police here last night. Sure, they had driven a couple squad cars over, but they were braving the city streets, out amongst the riff-raff, on foot and seeming to guard the favorite corner of our pesky golani (who were, of course, thus nowhere to be seen).
Goddess be praised.
Csiki - It does seem a little odd that there’s such an imbalance of police ethnicity both in general and in specific communities where the composition is at odds with the make-up of law enforcement.
To head ideas off at the pass, I would not be in favor of mandating the police force mirror the precise demographics of a given jurisdiction. It would be a step in the right direction to voluntarily diversify the police force by introducing great numbers of ethnic minorities and, yes, probably assign more heavily weight that in areas with a greater number of minority residents. Lest I forget, I’d also like to see a bit of the opposite — make some modicum of effort to place ethnic minorities in “all Romanian” jurisdictions under an equal opportunity schema. If the communists could force people to get along, then…
I am familiar with one anecdote from the general Cluj vicinity where a high concentration of ethnic-Magyar are clustered and the police force is exclusively Romanian. In that case, it seems the youth suffered what I would certainly describe as discrimination and harassment, although it must be said the Hungarian population merely saw it as a little sandpaper of the generic “people versus police” variety. It was a surprise to me they didn’t interpret race as a factor when I definitely did.
Bogdan - That sounds like a wise policy. I do hope some consideration is given to the notion of pairing up cop partners of different ethnicities (e.g., Roma with Romania, Roma with Hungarian) as I see some benefits if blurring some of the ethnic distinctions in situations where one has no cause to separate unnecessarily. Translation: I think it would be bad if “only Roma” policed Roma neighborhoods just as I think it would be bad if Roma officers were practically sidelined from patrolling Romanian neighborhoods.
In the meantime, I, for one, look forward to entertaining myself with the hysterical indignity outbursting when Steaua gets its’ inevitable first Roma star…
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:31 pm
I was just hanging out with my Romanian-American friend Radu over wine or beer or something, until late. :) Radu knew this woman through his family who cooked well, and often brought him food. That particular soup rocked. And no, the cops weren’t going to get a bit of it after I had to stand there to answer their questions with a few liters of liquid in a pot weighing down my arms. >;-)
I’m not sure where the Scots get off arresting people over that kind of curry when they adore haggis. ;-)
May 4th, 2007 at 1:12 am
“In the meantime, I, for one, look forward to entertaining myself with the hysterical indignity outbursting when Steaua gets its’ inevitable first Roma star…”
Here you are: Bănel “Jardel” Nicoliţă.
May 4th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Quite simply, the US scares the hell out of me these days, most surely the police. Ever since I can remember, I have felt nothing but poorly suppressed fear anytime I get near an American cop. And since the enactment of the Patriot Act, I have seen innumerable abuses of basic human and Constitutional rights by local police officers who weren’t doing anything related to the “War on Terror,” which to me has been nothing more than a nightmarish farce anyway.
Leaving from JFK to Europe less than a month ago, there seemed to be as many or more police/customs/security officers in the airport as there were passengers. There were even officers in the bathrooms watching me pee. What the hell?!?! The land of freedom?!?! And we’re going to export that to Iraq, North Korea, Cuba or anywhere else we think people need democracy?
I mean really: can anyone say that the US has NOT become a militaristic facist state on the verge of some cataclysmic military/political disaster, either externally or internally?
Whatever…
Since my arrival in Europe, including Romania, I haven’t once been hassled by police, and have largely been ignored by any and all officers of the law, the way it should be. I mean: shouldn’t a law-abiding citizen be free from the same stresses that criminals face when encountering police?
(Oh yeah. There was that one time in the Bihor courthouse where an officer got miffed because I was taking pictures inside the building without a permit. But after he watched me erasing the relevant pics from my digital camera, everything was fine. He didn’t even have to pull out his taser.)
May 13th, 2007 at 3:30 am
Ether, you’re so right…
What the hell is going on here, in U.S.? I was visiting Europe 2 years ago, and I felt released when I arrived there, like I was freed somehow…strange, when you think people used to immigrate here for diferent freedom issues…