I've had the pleasure of knowing a great number of cops over the past 30 years and, here in Niagara Falls, we've been blessed by the presence of a large number of extremely capable ones. They put their lives on the line to keep us safe in our homes at night, and very often go out of their way to make people's lives a little bit easier in a place where just trying to get by can be anything but easy.
Among a rather large segment of the population, however, the cops here and everywhere else suffer something of an image problem and, unfortunately, misguided members of their own profession often exacerbate this problem.
One of the first things you need to get past if you ever hope to understand law enforcement is that, as with anyone else, cops come in the good, bad and indifferent categories. While this should be obvious, a lot of people just don't get it. To them, the cops are always the good guys or they're always the bad guys, and there is little room for shades of gray.
Oddly enough, the cops themselves seem to know this better than anybody. "There's cops and there's guys who dress up in blue suits," a wizened old detective told me once, and truer words were never spoken.
I bring this all up because I find myself troubled by a recent Niagara Falls Police Department operation that any respectable cop might describe as, well, another word for the feces of chickens. The targeting of holiday shoppers on Factory Outlet Road last week is the kind of thing that gives police in general a bad name and is particularly harmful to anyone trying to do business in Niagara Falls.
The roadblock operation was led by career traffic cop Sal Pino, who went on the record saying perhaps the stupidest thing I've ever heard said by any cop.
"We want everyone to have a happy holiday season, and if you're in an accident without a seat belt, you won't have a happy holiday," he said.
At first I thought he was being ironic, talking with tongue firmly implanted in cheek and all that, but after reading it several times, it became apparent he was serious. He went on to brag about how he and his boys had issued a whopping 216 tickets to Christmas shoppers that will ultimately relieve the beleaguered, overtaxed, cash-strapped populace here of tens of thousands of dollars that otherwise might have been spent at local stores and restaurants.
To Pino, whose annual salary is three or four times that of the average Niagara Falls resident, maybe a $100 ticket is no big deal. He'd have made a fine pickpocket. Likewise, perhaps it doesn't bother him that he sucked many thousands of dollars out of the local economy as surely as if he'd gone into one of the stores and shoplifted a sackful of gold chains from the jewelry department.
The stores could have hired another 10 or 12 seasonal employees with that money, though, and the people who were hired would have spent their paychecks on Christmas gifts for their own families.
Perhaps the saddest case was that of a 52-year-old Canadian, John Maeers, who was looking to take advantage of the crumbling American dollar by crossing the border for his holiday shopping. While he is exactly the sort of person merchants in Niagara Falls have sought to attract for the past decade, he made the mistake of bringing two marijuana cigarettes with him, and is now in a world of trouble.
He undoubtedly will go back to Canada and tell everyone he knows about the wretched experience he had here in Niagara Falls, an experience every bit as bad as if he'd been mugged on the street, and the economic damage to our community from Pino's ridiculous roadblocks won't fully be calculable for years to come.
Pino and his defenders will say that the victims of this operation should have had their seat belts buckled, not been talking on their cell phones, had their cars inspected and not had any dope in the car, and they would be correct.
But I have heard arch-criminals defending their actions by saying that their victims shouldn't have left their keys in their car, or left their bedroom window open on a hot summer night, or dressed so provocatively, or just been so otherwise stupid, and then they wouldn't have been robbed, raped or murdered.
I never bought that line myself, but that's just me.
Like a grinch stealing Christmas from the down-and-out populace of Niagara Falls, Pino goes about his work with cold efficiency, pausing only long enough to brag about his accomplishments when the work is done.
"This is the third Black Friday that I've done a (seat belt checkpoint) at the same location and the same time," he said. "And I plan on doing it again next year on the same day at the same time and the same place, just to give everyone a warning."
A better warning might be provided by just posting signs at the Rainbow Bridge and all the other gateways to Niagara Falls.
"Take your money and go home," they should say.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Dec. 4 2007 |