[ back ]
University City mishandled petition snafu
To the editor:
It is more in sorrow than in anger that I read your account of the recent incident at the University City post office wherein a man gathering signatures on a petition — lawfully and harmlessly — was intimidated by the police.
Sorrow, I say, because when we first moved to University City 45 years ago, it was a community where discussion, dissent and freedom of expression were encouraged, indeed nurtured. Today, apparently, when the police get an anonymous complaint that someone is gathering signatures they threaten the gatherer with a citation for disorderly conduct. What has happened?
The response of the city manager and the police chief when this was brought to their attention was disappointing. To declare, as the city manager did, that “when we [the police] get a call, we respond” is disingenuous. Of course the police respond, and so they should. The issue is how they conduct themselves when they arrive at the scene of the complaint.
The police chief’s insistence that no one was threatened with arrest is simply hair-splitting. If a demand by a police officer for your name, address, date of birth, height, weight and Social Security number isn’t a threat of arrest, what is? Suppose the signature gatherer had refused to provide that information? Is the chief asking us to believe he would not have been arrested? Gimme a break, Chief.
If the city manager and police chief had a better grasp of the canon of common decency, they would: a) apologize; and b) assure the community that the cops will receive some supplementary instruction on how to treat citizens peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights. Instead, what do they do? They clatter up the nearest grassy knoll and lower their horns like a herd of musk oxen beset by wolves.
E. F. Porter
University City
[ back ]
