Tonight, while walking the dog next to the Bud Clark Commons, a Portland Police officer stopped me by saying, "Excuse me sir, can I talk to you? Does your dog have a license?"
I won't answer the question he asked for the moment, but this is what I did. As I turned away from him, I told him,"Sorry but I'm not going to answer the question and I'm going to walk away."
Immediately he asked me to stop, "Sir, please stop."
I turned back and asked, "Is it illegal for me to walk away?"
He said, "Yes".
So I turned around and walked back to him. He then asked me why I was trying to evade him, to which I responded that I didn't think I had to answer his question -- after all, here I am minding my own business and not showing any outward signs of suspicious behavior.
He then informed me that they were giving away free dog licenses, so I laughed and said, "Okay, that's fine." And then it got weird.
Suddenly his facial expression changed and he escalated. He began asking me rhetorical questions about why I didn't want to talk to him. His belligerence was rising as his voice got louder.
With his voice raised asking probing questions, three other officers who were standing 15 feet away, suddenly walked closer to us and stood about 5 feet apart from us. (Gee, you don't think I know this psychological tactic?)
He then asked me a rhetorical question that was obviously meant to be a threat, "Do you want me to take your dog away because he doesn't have rabies tags?"
Wow, in just about a minute he escalated from 1 to 7, suggesting that he would take my dog away! Oh, I recognized the sign immediately, that he thought that he had the upper hand and would use verbal threats to get me to comply or find some other violation.
But here's the thing: He took an enormous risk, on behalf of the police force, escalating, under the assumption that he had the upper hand, or that I would take the bite. I was shocked that he was rapidly inflating the situation.
If I were 15 years younger, I probably would have taken his cue and escalated with him, but being the wiser, and knowing that he could make life a lot more difficult by exercising poor judgment, I refused to escalate, keeping my voice at a normal level and asking him open questions about what was going on and why he was escalating things.
Perhaps it was my question over his escalation, or he realized that he lost control of the situation. His tone, though still obviously angry, suddenly changed as he explained that he was, in effect, too upset to continue talking to me, so that he was handing me off to the county officer -- a bit curious, blaming me for his escalation, when I spoke calmly to him without raising my voice or insulting him, the entire conversation.
Let me tell you, talking to this petite female county officer was a completely opposite interaction. I had a feeling that she was uncomfortable with his approach, and told her that I was glad to be talking to her instead of the Portland Police officer who was escalating things. It wasn't a good-cop / bad-cop routine at all. She was extremely helpful and offered me some tips -- one of which I stopped her because I didn't want her to get into trouble.
I did make a psychological poke at the Portland Police officer. While talking to the county officer, I asked her if it was okay that we talked further away from the officer. We walked about 10~15 feet away so that they couldn't listen in, and we were laughing and smiling -- out of the corner of my eye I could see that they were watching us. In the end, I got a temporary tag and I reached my hand out to shake her hand with smiles on both our faces. I wasn't being disingenuous, but I was trying to make sure that we were having a great conversation between two adults who understood each other, so that the officer could think long about how this interaction contrasted to his one with me.
I continued on my walk, but then thought to come around to get the officer's name. By the time I had come back -- some 40 minutes later -- they were gone.
Finally, to answer the question about my dog's tags. Well, based on the Fifth Amendment refusal to respond, the answer is now post-hoc (that you cannot presume that my answer was proof in itself that the original suspicion was correct): No, I did not have tags.
He wanted me to offer a confession to which I politely refused to answer the question. His two minute-long attempt to escalate is disconcerting.
What he should have said was, "Well sir, you're putting me into a situation where neither of us probably want to see, where I would have to seize your pet and have you show proof to a judge that your pet has tags."
That's a lot easier to comply with than, "Do you want me to take your dog away because he doesn't have rabies tags?"
Don't make me your enemy.
Instead, I leave you with this photo three blocks away from where this interaction took place, of a Portland Police Officer's vehicle illegally blocking a garage door and partially parked on the sidewalk no less. The block was mostly wide open to park (see the spaces just in front of the second garage door), but this officer was stopped in front of a garage door. Could this have been an emergency? -- I don't see how, since the only other officer vehicle was an unmarked car behind, properly parked, not anywhere near the entrance of any building.
What a night, huh?
No comments:
Post a Comment