wiscoaster
Well-known member
I've been hearing something lately on a local radio station what I take to be a new ad campaign. Its tag line is "if you see something, say something" and its message is "if you see suspicious activity, report it to your local authorities." I have problems with this message, for these three reasons:
1) Police don't want to deal with "suspicious activity" anyway ... they've got their hands full dealing with actual crimes, accidents, emergencies, etc. If they had to respond to every suspicious activity report they'd need to triple their manpower.
2) Ordinary citizens aren't qualified to recognize what genuine suspicious activity is. Everyone knows of some Nervous Nelly that's suspicious of everything that happens in the neighborhood. Perfectly ordinary activities of law-abiding citizens can be the same activities that are the prelude to a real crime. And what one person views as "out-of-place" may be seen as perfectly normal by another.
3) I don't want us to be turned into a nation of tattle tails. It's that kind of mind set that organizations like the Gestapo, the Stasi, the KGB and the Guonbu find most helpful. People who have an ax to grind can take it out on the object of their enmity by a false report. Everybody will end up not trusting anybody. A certain amount of trust is necessary in society.
1) Police don't want to deal with "suspicious activity" anyway ... they've got their hands full dealing with actual crimes, accidents, emergencies, etc. If they had to respond to every suspicious activity report they'd need to triple their manpower.
2) Ordinary citizens aren't qualified to recognize what genuine suspicious activity is. Everyone knows of some Nervous Nelly that's suspicious of everything that happens in the neighborhood. Perfectly ordinary activities of law-abiding citizens can be the same activities that are the prelude to a real crime. And what one person views as "out-of-place" may be seen as perfectly normal by another.
3) I don't want us to be turned into a nation of tattle tails. It's that kind of mind set that organizations like the Gestapo, the Stasi, the KGB and the Guonbu find most helpful. People who have an ax to grind can take it out on the object of their enmity by a false report. Everybody will end up not trusting anybody. A certain amount of trust is necessary in society.