206-764-HERO
Recently I undertook the monumental task of driving from San Diego to somewhere north of Seattle and back in roughly four days– and despite gas prices, Oregon cops, awkward reunions, dodgy motels, and a heat so oppressive even Jesus would have been soaking his robe in wine coolers and wearing it as a turban, it was a rather pleasant trip. But I saw something in the great state of Washingtion that gave me pause, and the more I ponder it, the greater my cause for alarm.
Washington is a sedate place, at the least the immediate acres to either side of I-5, and with the exception of a small tract of Seattle proper has very little traffic. Still, carpool lanes quite frequently expand the road to three or four lanes, which my companion and I found very useful—and then I began seeing the signs, posted every two or three miles over a large portion of the state.
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
Is this what it’s come down to? Law enforcement has become so lazy that now private citizens must rat out other private citizens for something as inane as abuse of the HOV lanes—something which doesn’t put anyone at any greater risk, and only carries a fine of $101 US?
As far as I’m concerned, this is a small but significant step in a very frightening direction because history has shown repeatedly that private people policing other people can all too easily become a vehicle for overzealous and erratic behavior based on fear rather than reason. Allowing people to report anything they feel compelled to has always been a basic structure of our local law enforcement systems, but actively encouraging people and empowering them to go looking for things to report crosses a very dangerous line. Don’t get me wrong— the idea behind communal responsibility is fine. If you see a serious crime taking place, especially one that will result in damage to a person or property, you should feel obligated to do something. After all, we’re all in this together, Johnny Law isn’t always around, and some crimes must be reported—but ratting out carpool lane violators? Are you serious? What’s next—a hotline to report litterbugs, or people who park illegally in handicap spaces? What about people who swear in public, or mention the words ‘Bush’ and ‘kill’ in the same sentence? Should we be on the lookout for people who smoke within 50 feet of the entrance to McDonalds, or bicyclists who don’t use the appropriate hand signals?
There was a word for that one kid in your class who always told on everyone for picking their nose or sticking their tongue out, and just about every parent has said to their children “no one likes a tattle-tale”. Trying to get kids to differentiate things they should report versus trivialities is a struggle for any parent, but apparently the Puget Sound transit authorities draw no such distinctions. By the site’s own admission “It can already be challenging to accurately determine whether a car has two or more occupants”, so unless you’re craning your neck to make sure there are no children, midgets, or sleeping passengers, you really can’t know. To make that call and feel good about yourself for it makes you a sheep and an asshole. What’s almost more egregious is the implication of having the phone number spell out the word HERO, as if telling on your brother for playing with his food made you a god damn model citizen and afforded you all the respect such a condition entails. The Dalai Lama is a fucking hero— you are a dickhead. Save the itchy cell phone finger for a real crime.
Let’s not forget that everyone is a criminal, whether it’s not returning extra change to the grocery store or rounding on your taxes, speeding or touching someone else’s mailbox, violating building codes or sneaking a peek at someone’s passport. No one is immune, and vilifying carpool lane violators is really just a stone’s throw from vilifying people who don’t carry a trash bag in their car (actually a crime in Washington state) or keep a pet over 50 pounds when the contract they signed with their complex expressly forbids that. The idea that any of those ‘crimes’ desperately need to be reported is fucking asinine. Actually, the entire concept of this program is asinine since, technically speaking, there is absolutely nothing law enforcement can do about a car that has been accused, no matter how often. No officer saw the crime and there is no proof beyond the hearsay of another motorist and, last I checked, hearsay was still not acceptable as evidence except in extreme cases of national security.
Further ass-ing up the concept is the fact that calling said number requires jotting down the make/model, license plate number and ‘approximate location’ of the offending vehicle while in transit, pulling out a cell phone, dialing it, and giving out that information. Considering cell phone users drive as poorly as drunks (documentation), how is it not more dangerous to make that call than to use the carpool lane while flying solo? Good news though: for those commuters without phones, there’s a handy online form you can fill out. In fact, this incensed me so greatly that I decided to report myself. My own car has never even been in the great state of Washington, so I challenge those lazy cunts to do their worst. I’ll expect the strongly worded letter sometime around the end of October.
This entire program does nothing but encourage public paranoia and vigilantism in a way that excites intellectuals rearing to use the word ‘Orwellian’. Private citizens should not be in charge of policing other private citizens’ every move. Have we forgotten what building a culture of fear and guilt-by-accusation does? Hellooooo– McCarthyism anyone? Did we learn nothing from the Spanish Inquisition? Have we forgotten the countless dead from hundreds of years of executing “witches” based on nothing more than the accusation of a neighbor? I know we’ve forgotten America’s own sordid history— the American Protective League, a publicly funded, volunteer group created in 1917 and given $275,000 of government money to assist in maintaining loyalty by actively snooping, eavesdropping, intercepting telegrams, opening mail and reporting any ‘suspicious’ behavior to the government. Public paranoia on a large scale has played a role in almost every massive violation of civil liberties in recent memory, from Jim Crow laws to the Palmer Raids to the Japanese Internment to Hitler’s Final Solution to the dozens (exact numbers still unknown) of foreign nationals rounded up after 9/11 and imprisoned without access to lawyers, the right to face their accusers in court or even to inform their families of their fate.
Fortunately, this is not yet the paranoia-gone-awry world depicted in 1984. Americans and a heavily conservative, reactionary Congress still had enough foresight to know that Operation TIPS and the Total Information Awareness program were bad fucking ideas. But building a culture of fear and suspicion is not beyond the reach of government and mainstream media, and the flourishing of similar tattle-tale programs in other cities and states makes me very nervous. George Orwell knew what he was talking about, and empowering private citizens to accuse each other of anything, major or minor, founded or unfounded, is a very large step toward a society that I promise you no one but The Men On The Hill want.
And if I disappear in the night, you’ll know why.
Keep your eyes open,
Adam