While people were distracted by the New
Hampshire Primary, thinking it an important part of our democracy and
considering it to have important implications on our future, someone
took that moment to rob and vandalize the local Occupy. Visual media
was stolen, gas lines were cut.
The police responded by laughing in the
faces of the people who reported it.
The visual media was of two forms, one
was professionally made advertising grade signs that could have been
used for years to come, should there have been a need, had they not
been stolen. The other more numerous form was that of hand made art
scheduled to be used in an art opening in Kennebunkport in April.
The police explained that signs have no
value, which would come as a surprise to those who make signs for a
living as well as every business that has never had to purchase a
sign in the history of the word. Signs cost money to make and thus
have very specific monetary value associated with them, but the
police had apparently been watching a movie that had a representative
of Hollywood-Zen in it because to them money isn't value, and stuff
is just stuff, so losing stuff that's worth money isn't losing
anything of value, so thus nothing was wrong and they didn't have to
open an investigation of the theft of stuff that's worth money.
The police had the same reaction to the
art, in fact there is no evidence that they distinguished between the
two. (Which is weird. The professionally made signs had
definite dollar values attached to them -which, again, were dismissed
as not counting- artwork doesn't have a definite price until
it's actually sold and even then the price is only certain at the moment of sale.) Thus they have determined that art has no value. I am
not affiliated with the Portland Museum of Art or any of the art galleries that
exist in Portland, but I can't imagine any of them feel particularly pleased to learn
that according to the police art has no value and thus art theft does
not need to be investigated.
You'd think the police would still
investigate the breaking in that would be involved, and thus those
with art could comfort themselves that there would be some kind of
investigation, but then we have to consider how they treated the gas
lines. But we'll get to that later.
Before we go there, there was an
explanation beyond simply that nothing that was stolen was of any
value since monetary value and artistic value don't count. (I'd have
to check, but I don't think they said what does count.) You
see, since everyone was paying attention to the New Hampshire
Primary, there was no one sanding in front of every piece of visual
media staring at it and telling all comers, “Don't steal this.”
As a result, it was considered unattended in a public place. Like a
car left on the side of the street.
Makes sense, there was no attendant and
the place was public. Perfectly valid reasoning, I'd say and I hope you
would agree. But here's something you might not know: when someone
takes something that's been left unattended in a public place that's
ok so that's not a police issue. So says the Portland police.
By that logic there is an abandoned car
on one side of my street and an abandoned pick up truck on the
opposite side right now at this moment. I do not live in a private
community, that street is public property. Thus, according to the
Portland police if someone, not the owner, comes and takes either of
them without the owner's knowledge or consent that is not a police
issue and the police should not open an investigation. But cars and
trucks cost money, you might protest. That would fall on deaf ears
because the Portland police have determined that monetary value
doesn't count.
Fortunately I live in South Portland,
which is a different city from Portland, so I don't think that I have
to worry about that same thing happening here.
Cars are the thing I think of being
left unattended on public property the most, but a better analogy
would be a bike. If someone were to come by a place where a bunch of
bikes had been chained up, systemically cut every bicycle chain (the
chains used to lock the bikes, not the drive chains), and then take
all of the bikes, that would actually be a better analogy for what
happened. The art and signs may have been left temporarily
unattended, but they were not left unsecured. Now what they were
secured with wasn't as durable as a bicycle chain (no one was
actually expecting a robbery), and so cutting those things wouldn't
be as hard. On the other hand it's hard to imagine enough bikes in
one place in Portland to make the thefts equivalent in terms of
numbers. Every single sign was stolen, every single artwork was
stolen. The theft probably required a truck to move all the loot.
Anyway, monetary value doesn't count,
artistic value doesn't count, and sentimental value sure as hell
doesn't count.
So the next time you're in Portland,
don't park on the street and bring your bike into the building with
you. If someone asks why you have a bike in the elevator, just
explain that the Portland police said that if you leave it chained up
outside and it gets stolen they will not investigate because it was
unattended in public and it doesn't have value. It costs money, but
that's not value.
Ok, so I said I'd get back to the gas
lines. After doing their whole, “What is anything worth? Sure it
has monetary value but that's not real value, is it?” thing, and
after explaining that anyone can steal any car parked at a city meter
(a city meter is a sure sign that the space the car is in is city,
and thus public, property) because it's been left unattended in
public, the police were confronted with another concern. What about
the cut gas lines?
It's a good question. They redefined
“value” in such a way that you could rob a bank and they'd go,
“Eh, it's only money. Nothing of value was lost,” and thus not
investigate. They've used a version of “unattended in public =
will not investigate” which makes it so that every car in the city
parked on a city street, and there are a lot of cars parked on the
street, or in a public lot (like say the police station's lot) is now
fair game. But surely they still recognize that cut gas lines are
dangerous and if someone goes around cutting gas lines that needs
some kind of follow up, right?
No. Of course not. That's when they
laughed. If someone cuts a gas line in Portland, the police will not
investigate. They will laugh at the person whose gas line was cut.
And that is truly disturbing.
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Now, in all seriousness, do I think
that the police would refuse to investigate a stolen car because it
had been left unattended in public? No. Do I think they really
believe their pseudo-Zen bullshit* line of reasoning about not
needing to investigate because monetary value isn't real value? No.
Do I think that the police would have done the same thing if the art
were being used in an art opening instead of just scheduled to be
used as such? No.
I don't think they meant what they
said. I don't think that the believe monetary value isn't real
value, I don't think they believe that art theft doesn't count, I
don't think they believe “unattended in public” means “steal
this and the police will let you get away with it.” I don't think
they believed any of it.
I think what probably happened is
twofold.
First, I think that they consider the
members of the occupy movement to be people without worth and
therefore they assume that the occupiers' stuff is likewise
worthless. I don't think they actually considered what they were
saying when they pronounced the monetary value of the stuff stolen to
not equate to real value. I think instead they saw the lack of value
of the stuff stolen to be a consequence of the lack of value of the
people it was stolen from.
I think it was that simple. The
occupiers have no value so their stuff must have no value. Therefore
one doesn't have to tally up exactly what the dollar value of the
stolen stuff is, you've already determined it has no value. Monetary
value doesn't even enter into the reasoning and gets dismissed
entirely. Of course they don't have anything of value, just look
at them. Who cares how much it costs?
Yes, they said that monetary value
doesn't count for anything, but I think that was more collateral than
the central thrust of their argument. I think it was just something
they had to have in order to maintain their original conclusion of, “The
occupiers couldn't have had anything of value in the first place.”
Given that some of the stuff taken had clearly identifiable monetary
value, one needs claim that monetary value doesn't count to maintain
that belief.
That's not good, and it shouldn't
happen, but at least it only involves threats to property. The
problem is that that can't be the whole story because of the gas
lines. It doesn't matter whether you consider someone worthless or
the best thing ever, if their gas line is cut that's dangerous.
That cuts across any class divide. It
cuts across judgments of the person, it is a pretty much universal
truth. A cut gas line is dangerous. It doesn't matter if you think
there's no way someone could possibly have anything of value to
steal, if their gas line was cut that's a very clear problem. It's a
threat that needs to be taken seriously.
And yet, it wasn't. That brings me to
my second thought about what really happened.
I think that the police simply don't
like the occupiers and so were thinking about it just in terms of how
they could get out of helping the occupiers.
I don't think they were thinking about
the larger implications of their words but are instead looking for
excuses to ignore the occupiers. The city of Portland runs on people
leaving things unattended in public. If you shut down people's
ability to do that the parking garages would probably squee with joy
but the city would simply not be able to function the way it does
now. It wouldn't work, it would break down. (And the city would
lose all parking meter revenue.) Eventually some sort of new normal
would emerge, but it wouldn't be like the way things are now.
I don't think they were thinking about
the fact that what happened is exactly the same as stealing a bike
someone chained up outside while they went inside.
I don't think they thought about what
would happen if everyone was as dismissive of monetary value as they
were right then. If money has no value, then why would someone trade
something that does have value (like good or service) for it? How
would the police be paid? How would someone buy food? I don't think
they thought that one out.
I definitely don't think they thought
the gas line thing out. The occupiers were all ok, no one got hurt
by any of the cut gas lines, so they weren't confronted with what
could have happened and I don't think they even briefly touched on it
in their minds. I don't think they thought about what would really
happen if they gave a blank check to anyone and everyone to go around
cutting gas lines in the city of Portland.
I don't think they thought about any of
this because I think they'd determined that this was a one time
thing. Get rid of the occupiers as rudely as possible and never
think about what was said or done again. They didn't think about how
things would go if they honestly started treating cut gas lines the
way they pretended it was normal to treat them for this one, because
I don't think they intend to do that.
If a random person is robbed I think
they'll respond. If a random person has her gas line cut, I think
they'll investigate who did it. I don't think they refuse to do
their jobs in general, I think that they've made a special cut out
for crimes against Occupy Maine.
That's why everything in the first
section of this post is so absurd. Of course they're not actually
going to stop investigating stolen cars, they just pretended that
they follow a set of rules that would inevitably lead to that so that
they could avoid investigating this one thing. They probably never
even considered what the effect would be if they actually tried to
follow those rules when it came to things like auto theft.
Of course they don't actually believe
that monetary value counts for nothing, they just said that so they
could avoid opening this one investigation. If anyone outside of the
occupy movement is robbed they're not really going to say, “We
can't investigate this unless what was stolen had value, can you
prove to us it has value? Its dollar value doesn't count.”
Of course they don't think that cut gas
lines are something to laugh at in general, they just think it is
when the gas lines that were cut belonged to members of the occupy
movement.
That's not good. It means they're
choosing what crimes to investigate based on the victims. If the
police don't like you then someone can rob you with impunity. Worse
than that, someone can cut your gas line.
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* Note well that the I'm not calling
actual Zen bullshit. I am saying that when a police officer refuses
to investigate a theft because material things have no value no
matter how much money they might be worth, that's bullshit. It's also the kind of thing I might expect to hear from a Zen character written by someone who knows nothing about Zen.
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I am not affiliated with Occupy Maine,
though I am related to someone who is.
You can find Occupy Maine's website at:
http://www.occupymaine.org/
Have you sent this or are you planning on sending this to the Portland newspaper(s)? Because, seriously, I think this needs a wider local audience if only because they're the ones who can put pressure on the police to actually do their jobs.
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