Here's hot it goes: you're walking down the street at night, leaving the fraternity party of your choice. You feel good and that's because six or 11 beers tend to do that to a person. As you edge home, you stammer over a crack in the sidewalk you missed or trip on the curb.
Suddenly, there he is: Mr. Policeman. In his dark uniform with his tear gas and firearm handy, he is invariably taller and meaner than you. There's no fighting or running.
"Hey you -- have you been drinking?" he asks.
"Well, occifer --" What can you say?
"Can you blow into this please" he asks, mean and making it not sound like a question at all. You blow into the breathalyzer and the next thing you know you're in custody.
Dartmouth is all over New England's newspapers and televisions because of the Hanover Police's tactics in policing alcohol offenders. But is what they're doing really illegal, or just in bad taste?
"Possession by consumption" and on-the-spot breathalyzers seem to be the methods of choice for nabbing underage drinkers at the College, relying on the inference that if someone has beer in their belly they must have possessed it in hand at some point (obviously they do not account for funneling).
Such methods are not new, however. When a police officer requests that he step in your home, it does not sound like a question, yet you have the right to say no. The same goes for when you are "asked" to pop the trunk of your car, or take a blood-alcohol test on the road, for that matter.
Officers do this because they have an obligation to enforce the law, and if they act very polite and let the person they are questioning think he is in control, they won't get anywhere, or even worse the whole thing will turn into a comedy:
"Please?"
"No!"
"Come on!"
"No!"
So why are we angry at these guys? Because we feel they're not giving us a fair shake. We assume that because we go to a residential college we can get drunk and walk home to safety. We expect the police to say "Well, you're a student so it's okay - just go right to bed and take care of yourself." We don't expect to be treated as if we are actually committing a crime.
Hanover Police Chief Nick Giaccone sees things differently. Alcohol to him, as he told Dartmouth Life, "is the root of most problems ... assault, theft, vandalism." He is right. We have all seen drunken friends do things -- criminal or otherwise -- that they never would do if they were sober.
Still, we feel victimized because for the most part we don't plan on thievery or vandalism when we drink. Even so, the police argue that we are more prone to step in front of cars, or fall and get injured, or not realize we have passed our limit and become a danger to our own safety. They argue that it is their job to stop us from doing these things. How do they know that if they do not stop us, we won't go to another party, drink six more beers, and then end up passing out?
If the police have the right to police in the manner they do, what is the issue, then? Foremost it is a question of a police chief controlling his officers.
If left to enforce the law without restraint, officers will act as professionals and handle transgressions with the most effective means they can muster.
Fingerprinting fraternity members in an effort to solve a burglary when frats are known to play such pranks may be a sound method of solving a crime, but it's just not appropriate in a college community when the items stolen are candy and Snapple.
Similarly, sternly requesting students to take breathalyzer tests is legally acceptable, but oddly out of place when they're on their way home to a dorm to go to sleep.
We simply do not need this type of rigorous enforcement in our community, as we have gotten along fine without it for so many years previous. Indeed, there is a difference between what is legal and what is appropriate.
Who's right? Both the students and the police are. The police are doing what is within their power to enforce a law, and we are not accustomed to it, nor do most of us think it's appropriate. Simply, the police may be overreacting to what seems to be commonplace in many college communities.
It would be best if the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union stayed out of this, and best if we stopped whining that we are dealing with Nazis. What the police are doing will most likely stand up in any court of law. The Hanover Police, although sometimes pushy, are not fools.
Instead, the police might want to find a better way to expend their energy dealing with those who drink and pose a serious threat, and not be so intent on stopping someone who tripped on a crack in the sidewalk.
It is a hard point to discern, but it must be done if they plan on getting along with the college community they serve. The alternative is that they continue to alienate students, and in doing so get denied student cooperation in cases where it really counts.
