When talking is more powerful than a ticket

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/12/2016 (3181 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I was supposed to start my year-end vacation Friday, but the night before an email arrived from a reader that was so compelling, I decided to donate a day of work to share it with you.

“I am prompted to write to you,” Doug MacKenzie began, “after reading the statement by Staff Sgt. Rob Riffel in your article of Dec. 29th. ‘We’re there to help the public.’”

He went on to say he had had his share of interactions with police over his 73 years, most of them of little significance. There were three he remembers vividly, though, beginning back in 1959, while growing up in Winnipeg’s Weston district.

“I was a 16-year-old kid living on the corner of Worth and Alexander. I would sleep out in the front porch during the summer, and park my first car, a 1949 Dodge right in front of the house. I loved to burn as much rubber as I could every time I drove away. It seemed that the neighbours didn’t find it as pleasing as I did.

“One morning bright and early I was awakened by someone knocking.

“When I opened the door there was a police officer standing on my porch. He asked if I was Douglas MacKenzie and if he could come in and speak with me. He didn’t seem that much older than me, and he was very polite. He said that he had been told to hide his police car in a back lane across the street from my house and throw the book at me with enough tickets that I would lose my driver’s license. He then told me about my neighbours and how much I was upsetting them. He asked if I thought there might be an alternative.

“Two things happened to me that morning. I had never really thought before how my actions might affect others, and I realized that a ‘COP’ was actually a person. I promised that I would never again do stupid things in front of my house.”

MacKenzie went on to suggest if the police officer had slapped him with a wad of tickets it wouldn’t have had the same profound impact their little chat did.

“I will always be thankful that a police officer took the time to talk to me.”

MacKenzie was 22 the next time a cop made a life-long impression on him.

“I had just parked my car in front of the corner grocery store. I was inside when a RCMP officer walked in and asked who owned the green car parked outside. I identified myself as its owner, feeling quite confident I had done nothing wrong.”

The Mountie asked him if he had any children. MacKenzie told him he had a three-year-old son. The officer asked him to imagine his son as a six-year-old, walking to school but not being able to use the crosswalk because a car was blocking it.

“He then asked if my son had to walk around that car only to be hit and killed by an oncoming car because the driver could not see him, how would I feel about the driver that parked his car across a school cross walk?”

That’s when MacKenzie realized his car had been blocking the crosswalk in front of the store, and got the message the Mountie was really trying to deliver.

“All I could think about was how I would feel if a child were to be killed because of my callous behaviour. The officer stood looking at me for a few seconds and then turned and walked out of the store. He didn’t give me a ticket, or even a warning, he just left. It was another encounter with a police officer I will never forget.”

Then there was the third one that happened this year. MacKenzie, his wife Muriel and daughter Wanda had been Christmas shopping in Winnipeg and they were chatting merrily away as they drove home to LaBroquerie.

“As we approached the town of Landmark there was a slow-to 60 sign. I slowed down as I drove through the town, all the time talking and laughing with my wife and daughter.”

Then he heard a police siren.

“I knew why I was being pulled over, I was doing 60 in a school zone. I felt really stupid especially after there had been so much talk on the news about slowing down in school zones lately. When the officer came to my window he asked if I knew why he was pulling me over. I told him I did, and that I had no excuse for not slowing down.”

The RCMP officer asked if he saw the school sign, and where he lived. MacKenzie told him he didn’t see the sign and he lived in LaBroquerie. “Again I said I had no excuse and deserved a ticket.”

The Mountie walked back to his car with MacKenzie’s drivers licence and registration and when he returned he handed him a piece of white paper.

“When I looked at it I was a little confused. I couldn’t see any charges. The officer said it was a warning, and then said ‘drive safe and have a Merry Christmas.’”

Of course, he thanked the officer, and wished him a Merry Christmas, too. But MacKenzie recalled being shocked that he didn’t get a ticket. So when he got home he pinned the police officer’s warning on the wall of his home shop where the retired power engineer works away restoring a 1947 Chevy. The white-paper warning is prominently placed to remind him of two lessons learned.

To pay attention when he’s driving.

“And that police officers are still people, even in 2016.”

All of this reflecting on police as people who treat others as people moved MacKenzie to see a common moral to the three stories.

“The police have a job to do, and sometimes we are not happy with their actions. But, whether you are a police officer or a citizen, if you take the time to talk with someone that has made a mistake rather than punish them, you just might get a better result.”

MacKenzie concluded with another thought, one we only think about when we need the police, never when they’re handing us a pricey traffic ticket.

“Where would we be without them?”

Happy New Year everyone.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca