My first teaching contract was with the White River School District, teaching in
the Rainier Institution and School for the Retarded in Buckley, Washington. One
of our teaching assistants was a former police officer who had lost a good deal
of his hearing by refusing to wear ear protection while on the firing line doing
shooting practice. He admits he was too macho to live at the time. Marv
admitted that he was glad he lost so much hearing to the point he had to leave
the force, as he'd begun to realize that constant exposure to the worst of human
behavior was driving him to become abusive and so cynical he wouldn't listen to
explanations as to what had really happened. He suspected that if he'd not been
forced to leave when he did, eventually he'd probably end up being arrested
himself for beating up prisoners who would prove to be innocent of any crime.
A few years after I moved to my present home, I rented my barn to a guy who had
been close friends for years with Jack, whom Tony and I had known for close to
fifteen years. Even though he'd not seen this Dave for over twenty years, Jack
was certain that Dave would be an okay tenant. After a year of tenancy, Dave
and his live-in girlfriend got back into methamphetamines and began reverting to
typical druggy behavior, which included stealing everything that wasn't nailed
down and a few things that literally had been. By the time they began openly
stealing to me, every complaint made against them was responded to with, "We're
sorry, but our hands are tied." I couldn't get anyone to help retrieve stolen
property or to help force them off my property, even when they'd not paid rent
for months and had been caught in possession of stolen cars and goods and
selling drugs from the barn. I had to go through the whole eviction process,
which involved having to hire a lawyer as the judge in my county who handled
eviction cases would not allow private citizens to represent themselves in his
courtroom. Not until they were finally gone did I learn that they'd been
recruited as police informants and thus were being protected by the very
officers and institutions intended to protect the general public from them, and
although most of the officers in the region wanted them put away for good they
were threatened when they arrested them until they accepted they couldn't do
anything to protect anyone from almost anything the pair did. I don't know what
agency was protecting them, but even when they proved no help at all in weeding
out other drug offenders or car thieves, IF they got arrested they'd be released
usually before the arresting officer finished the paperwork necessary to process
them into jail. I could have lost everything I owned because of these yahoos,
and I was powerless to do anything about it except to go to court to have them
evicted, even when they'd begun threatening me with physical harm and were
constantly turning off the water to the house (the controls for the well and
water were there in the barn where they could easily manipulate them while I
couldn't as easily turn the water back on) during the hottest summer we ever
had. This summer may have been the driest summer on record, but the year these
two were constantly denying me water was the hottest I ever remember, with the
heat being at record levels starting in May.
It's hell when good police officers are forced to allow people they are dying to
see go to prison for well documented crimes to continue on with their criminal
careers and decent people are forced to endure exploitation and threats until
some legal sham is enacted forcing the criminals to begone. Officers who
responded to my complaints and those of my neighbors finally told me they could
do nothing until I managed to get them evicted (and the judge would not allow me
to list their criminal activities among the reasons for the eviction--he'd only
accept the fact they'd not paid rent for five months as THE reason) and legally
off my property. But even then they were not allowed to do anything to stop
them from ranging around two counties squatting on property and continuing to
steal except finally to evict them from said counties as vagrants. Oh,
yeah--force them off the Peninsula to become similar problems elsewhere in the
state.
Bonnie L. Sherrell
Teacher at Large
"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very
wise cannot see all ends." LOTR
"Don't go where I can't follow."
We gave the Goblin King control of our nation!
