Police Psychology

A basic grasp of this subject has proven invaluable to me of late, as odd as it may seem while spending so much time out on a boat, away from law enforcement in almost every aspect.

Last week, it came into play during our stay at a yacht club which shall remain nameless. A security deposit was required for the gate key, a common requirement at any marina. I didn't have enough cash, the person at the desk when we checked in didn't believe that her stand-in the next day would be capable of figuring out how to reverse a deposit authorized on a credit card, and at any rate we were leaving much earlier in the morning than anyone staffed the desk. She accepted my driver's license and told me I could turn in the key and collect the card from the night watchman before we headed out.

She didn't have a number or radio channel on which we could get hold of him, nor did he normally stay at the desk. This combination of information, while apparently vague, in actuality told me everything: having been a night watchman myself, I knew I would have to get up early the next day to give myself time to poke around all the buildings to find whatever secluded corner he was using to sleep in on the job.

In case he was smart and to give him an honorable way out, I first banged loudly on the front door of the main building, but there was no response. A more crafty man would be dozing nearby the entrance most likely to attract attention, hoping to be woken by the noise of anyone knocking or entering, but this wasn't the case. Fortunately, it was a terribly hot night, and two doors were left open on the main patio on the other side of the building, so I was able to walk in and wake him up from the couch on which he was napping in the bar. License retrieved, we left on time.

Our next stop was False Creek, where the subject of police psychology came up once again. Here in Vancouver, there are certain anchoring restrictions supposedly in effect in the False Creek area that allow anchorage only outside the navigable channel, and only for two weeks in every four during the summer. To enforce these, a self-registration system is set up, where you fill out your paperwork and post a permit on your boat if you are staying overnight.

I knew that considerable effort had been made prior to the Olympics to clear out the vast numbers of abandoned and resident derelicts, but as we motored in the other day, this seemed to have been abandoned or neglected in the intervening months. The anchorage was still very crowded, and many of the boats there didn't display permits, and looked either abandoned or as if they couldn't possibly have moved in the past two weeks. So, I wasn't all fired up about the necessity of getting a permit myself, for only two nights there. I figured if there was any enforcement effort, it would more likely be occupied with the more obvious transgressors and probably took some time to get rolling judging by how long some of them looked to have been in place.

I did go ashore that first day and stopped by the permit station, and if there had been a pen or something there, I would probably have just filled the thing out and dropped it in the box, but there wasn't so I just picked up the paperwork and took it back to the boat with me. I decided, at least partly out of curiosity, to hold off and see what happened.

I was relying, in this, on another principle of police psychology, which is the desire to avoid unnecessary paperwork. Even if there was a regular patrol, and even if they did note our presence, the most powerful instinct even when noting the absence of a posted permit, would be to let it go for a couple days... who wants to fill out tickets or file reports on problems that are going to go away by themselves? Additionally, most officers genuinely want to deal with real problems and not busywork; with limited hours in the day and clear choices between a boat that was obviously just passing through and others which equally obviously were not, most of them would probably give us a pass for a few days and deal with the longer-term problems. I was anchored near several of these, and figured the difference would be obvious.

Anyway, I dinghied ashore the next day and headed up the seawall path only to see a police Zodiac heading down the waterway past me. I was too far around a curve to see my boat, but I was curious how closely it might get looked at, so I stopped to watch. Sure enough, the Zod bent in off his course and swung into the anchorage. I couldn't see exactly what he was up to, though he pulled in and out a couple times (possibly just idling in circles as he was writing?) and had plenty of time to tag several of us in there. I didn't see anyone with permits properly displayed. Here, however, another aspect of cop psychology would be working against me: once you get the ticket book out and you're stopping to cite one offender, you may as well do 'em all. The stats look good.

This is one of the reasons the paperwork rule is not infallible; there are motivations involved beyond the obvious, in the form of superiors and other bureaucratic incentives. And there is always the danger that you'll get one of those twisted individuals who thrives on paperwork, and can happily spend all day dotting i's and crossing t's and will enforce the letter of the law to the last detail. You can't reason with, fudge, or sway these guys, they will just putter right along detailing every transgression and acting as the law dictates without logic or reason. They're like a big legal assembly line.

Although that may in fact seem like the fairest approach, in fact it's dangerous because most laws now are so complex and the mechanisms for implementation are so ill-defined that enforcement is effectively arbitrary. The law is whatever the police and prosecutors (although the two may not always agree) says it is, and applies to whoever they decide to apply it against. Too many laws and too few natural applications for them make for a sort of fascism, which inevitably is enforced mostly against an underclass that has no effective means of protest.

All the same, in reasonable hands, this isn't entirely unproductive. Though they may hate the paperwork, pursuant to filling it out most cops have an excellent opportunity to interact directly with the people being investigated, letting their very real and astute police instincts sort out the legitimate problems from the minor violations. This isn't infallible; I have a friend, an entirely stand-up guy who is utterly innocent of all significant wrong-doing, who manages to set off those cop instincts with every interaction he has with law enforcement and consistently gets the fifth degree. On the whole, though, most cops can sort out most citizens between those who have made a mistake or are confused, and those are truly up to no good. In this respect it's not a lot different from how things have always worked with law enforcement.

But if you also have some understanding of how exactly that process works, it's much easier to have conversations with officers that result in nothing happening, even if you haven't done everything technically legally. You simply have to reassure them that, in the main, you are all right, didn't mean it, and probably won't do it again.

How to do this depends on the officer and the circumstances, and I would say there aren't probably any hard and fast rules except to avoid challenging their authority. You may know it's bullshit, but there's no faster way to make things bad than to call them on it.

When I got back to the boat there was no notice of any sort on it, but I did notice that two others nearby that had not previously displayed permits, now had them up in the windows. My theory is that they were still aboard and got a talking to, and then complied with the registration. I filled out all my paperwork and put up the registration too, taking another basic principle of cop psychology as a guide: blend in, and they won't bother you. When no one else around had a permit up, it was okay that I didn't. Now that several of them did, I wanted one as well. Being the grey man, the one that looks just like everyone else, is a good way to avoid attracting attention in the first place.

That's not always possible. An example would be our late arrival to clear Customs in Port Townsend last year. We were faced with a very irritable Customs officer who had been called in after hours, and some serious fines for our transgression, not to mention the possibility we simply wouldn't be allowed back in to the country.

Late as we were, we had to wait even longer for the officer to show up, which on top of a very long day already was difficult to bear. Mandy was fuming so I swore her to silence; women, if they can't cry productively and on-demand, aren't always an asset to these interactions, having a certain sense of entitlement that rises from frequently getting the benefit of the doubt from authority figures at every stage of their upbringing. Anger and entitlement aren't useful attitudes in this respect. I didn't let her cook dinner, either, though her temper is even fouler when she is hungry... I didn't want to look too comfortable and settled in. It's good if you can look a little abject and miserable yourself; the idea that you've already paid, in some sense, for having done something wrong, can factor in your favor (this doesn't always work; I got a ticket after totaling my truck in college, for excessive speed, even though I had been within the limit, nothing else was damaged, my truck was clearly trashed, and I was lucky to be walking away; the trooper was just being a dick, and I got the ticket thrown out in court later. Still, he wasted my time and introduced undue anxiety I could have done without right then).

When the CBP officer showed up, I was tremendously apologetic in the manner of someone who has just dinged a stranger's car in a parking lot... gosh, sorry, I just didn't see it, thought I was clear, super sorry about that, I'll take care of whatever the insurance needs, sort of thing. We had had some engine difficulties, which made us later (though we probably were never have going to been exactly on time, and hadn't called ahead, or enough ahead, to schedule clearance for that reason), and I introduced an element of frustration with the engine, ensuring my dirty and bloodied hands were on display without calling attention to them. The patched hoses in the engine compartment were what sealed the deal; they were real, but after seeing them, the officer didn't investigate any further, and indeed didn't check our ID, ask any other questions, or do anything else except complain about the paperwork and staffing problems that apparently consume his post.

In my apologies I was careful to commiserate with this sort of problem in general, showing I understood that cops have lives too, and though we were late getting home already and badly wanting to tie up at a mooring and get some food and sleep, we sat around and chatted for quite a while about the miseries of working for the border patrol with him. He actually was a pretty decent guy and I did genuinely feel bad about his own situation; my anger was at the terrible system that put us both there and the inability of either of us to do anything constructive about it.

This sort of ingratiation shouldn't be carried too far, of course; it starts to be obvious and serves as a bit of a warning flag. And cops aren't stupid; they will usually know what you are up to no matter how subtle you think you are. But in some respects that doesn't matter. If you're able to make the effort and not over-do it, they are still getting a sense of who you are and whether or not you are worth the effort of further action.

Anyway; it's tiresome to have to deal with authority figures on this basis, but apparently, like any other sort of seamanship skill, it's necessary for navigating the complex waters of international cruising today.