Did cops overreact?
I will never complain about the job Public Safety is doing because they follow a certain protocol. In all my experiences with the officers on campus, I have had no issue, but as an on looker I saw something that frustrated me.There he was, a classmate of mine I’ll refer to as Jim, trying to explain himself to the Castleton Police and Public Safety. He apparently jumped out his suite window. This would be a problem to me if he was doing it from the fourth floor of Babcock, but seeing as how it was the first floor of his building, I think a simple fine would have sufficed.
Public Safety approached Jim and started asking him what he was doing. There had been a heated incident about two hours before this, so Public Safety assumed Jim was connected somehow. He lived there, continuing to make this point to Public Safety.
Castleton Police arrived a few minutes later. The officer asked him, “why are you being stupid?” A calm, but quickly annoyed, Jim repeated, “can I just explain what happened.-”
By the time Jim had cuffs on him, and was thrown into the back seat of the cop’s Charger, another Castleton Police car pulled in right behind it. This was the officer that began to antagonize Jim in the back of the car. Jim took the breathalyzer and still wanted to just plead his case. A few obscenities were exchanged between this officer and Jim, because Jim told the officer to stop kicking his leg.
The police officer was learning on Jim’s leg with his own. Jim yelled for the officer to remove his boot from his knee. The officer sat there long enough to count to five Mississippi, then removed his foot and shut the door. The Charger pulled out of its parking spot, and the officer threw his hands up in the air and said, “wooo.”
Seeing how this incident was dealt with, I was disgusted for three reasons. One, the Castleton Police were called for the wrong incident outside Jim’s building, they should have been there a few hours sooner.
Two, I had to watch my peer plead his case to every officer, and still being treated like he was causing trouble. Climbing out of a window is stupid but isn’t there a campus fine for that? Why do we need to call the Castleton Police to deal with that, when Public Safety had no problem dealing with the previous event in house?
Three, there were about 50 drunk students that walked by the scene without being questioned about drinking that night. The police seemed to be out for underage drinkers, because Jim got charged with drinking underage, despite being far less intoxicated than the several underage passerbys.