Why police keep stopping the same kinds of people
They see many of those people as different, and different is bad
Sometimes, you get to experience something simple and beautiful in a place so charming that you wonder how it’s possible that you're allowed in.
That happened to me about 25 years ago, in Glencoe, Illinois. It was pretty sweet until the police there let me know that maybe I didn’t belong there after all.
It all started because I needed good firewood. I co-owned a little retail store in Chicago that was heated with a wood stove, and I had tired of having wood delivered that was too green, too waterlogged or too expensive.
Then I found Jim Beinlich, who ran a tree-removal service out of his house at 671 Dundee Road in Glencoe. At the end of his driveway, there was a different world.
He had the biggest, most rustic backyard I’ve ever seen, in the middle of one of the ritziest suburbs on the North Shore.
It was about three acres, cluttered with firewood in various stages of seasoning. Trucks and a big wood splitter and conveyor system were parked off to the side.
Customers like me who arrived after the workday ended could load up with wood and leave the money in a mailbox attached to the back porch.
Every week or so, in season, on the way back from doing newspaper work in Northbrook, Glenview or Buffalo Grove, I’d stop at Beinlich’s. On those days I used a car dedicated to that purpose, a 10-year-old Chevy with heavy-duty springs, and faded paint from its former life as a taxicab.
Stopping at Beinlich’s always made my day, getting unaccustomed outdoor exercise in the wintry sunshine, paying for the wood at the honor box. It seemed a nostalgic throwback to old days I’d never actually experienced.
One day, on the way out of Beinlich’s, my Brigadoon-like mood was interrupted when I was curbed on Dundee Road by a Glencoe squad car. The patrol officer wanted to know what I was doing in his town.
I gestured to the firewood in the back seat, and told him where I’d gotten it. That didn’t stop him from asking the same question, over and over, in different ways.
Another officer came by and backed him up. After at least ten minutes of pointless dialogue, interspersed with officers talking over their radios and with each other, I started to get a little nervous. Why was this going on so long? What did the cops think they knew about me? But then I was told that I could go.
I was strangely exhilarated. It was as if the positive experience of visiting Jim Beinlich The Firewood King was the first stop at a carnival, and playing at being the target of a random police stop was another, more thrilling, ride on the way to the concession stand. Like a roller coaster, the cops had gotten my blood moving. I felt a little more alive, and happy it ended without causing any real negatives.
That was the first time. But it would happen again. And again.
The third time, I got pulled over on the way to Beinlich’s, so I had no firewood to point to. The officers kept checking with their bosses. They stopped asking me questions, stopped looking me in the eye. I looked at my watch, and almost an hour had passed.
Across the wide highway, a taxicab pulled over. Joey Doubles, a cab driver of long acquaintance, had seen me detained on the side of the road on the way to drop off a fare, and saw me still there on his way back. He got out of his cab and lounged against the fender. He made a show of smoking cigarettes and idly glancing at the police every once in a while.
Another half hour passed. I walked up to one of the cops and said, “I’m leavin’. See ya.”
I got in the car and drove away. As the squad cars following me peeled off, I thought to myself, I’m glad I’m not Black or Mexican.
I didn’t go to Beinlich’s, preferring to just get out of Dodge. I went back to the store and ordered a face cord of firewood for delivery.
Glencoe is one of only two towns in Illinois with combined police and fire departments. Each officer has both responsibilities. People generally seem to like firefighters better than cops, especially lately. The dual role may make Glencoe cops more popular, but it doesn't automatically make them more sensitive.
In early 2011, coverage of Glencoe was added to my responsibilities at the newspaper. In the spring, my wife died, leaving our 10-year-old daughter behind. Come summer, the kid went to work with me most days, to save on child care.
She would accompany me to the little interrogation room where I read Glencoe’s police reports. The deputy chief, or a substitute he designated, would come in and answer my questions after I was done.
The second or third week, one of the lieutenants took my kid in hand and set her up in another room with a cup of hot chocolate, so she could draw and read her comic books without having to hear us talk about crime stuff.
And that was the way it was, Tuesday after Tuesday. No matter who was working, there was always a cop assigned to babysitting duty, without anything being said.
Over the years, before and after my wife’s passing, I got to know several Glencoe Public Safety Department officers as people. There was the one who first tried to make sure my kid had her cocoa, and then retired and sold real estate. There’s another who still patrols in his sixties, and actually seems to enjoy looking for lost dogs. One runs a parrot sanctuary in unincorporated Cook County. A retired deputy chief works full time in the private sector, and invites dozens of people to his house on holidays so they might feel welcome and wanted even if their own stock of relatives is diminished.
And there are others. Of all the police departments I became familiar with over decades, I may have formed more relationships in Glencoe than anywhere else, though some other departments are close.
So will the real Glencoe cops stand up? Are they the ones who watched over my daughter or harassed me on Dundee Road?
They’re basically the same people, I think. I’ll leave it up to the reader to try to figure out how that’s possible.
But I can tell you one thing. I asked one of them a few years ago what the officers who pulled me over for no reason were thinking.
Cops, I was told, are trained to pay close attention to anything that is unusual, out of place. When things look different, but aren’t noted, bad things can happen. Anomalies are ignored at everybody’s risk.
The point was that old Chevys with faded multi-colored paint jobs rolling through a suburb full of expensive cars may look unusual enough to draw attention. The point that wasn’t made was that sometimes, drivers with atypical coloration look out of place, too.
Especially at night, it seems.
A key to avoiding unnecessary or antisocial police activity may be to celebrate differences instead of categorizing them all as threats.
Otherwise, firewood vendors may lose a lot of business.
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