As I was walking down the street Tuesday morning, a Lebanon police car pulled up beside me to park at a meter in front of New Hamp Hall. There is no great significance to this other than the fact that the out of uniform policeman who exited the car walked away from the expired parking meter without even giving it a moment's glance.
I figured he was simply dropping something off and would be back to retrieve his vehicle in a few minutes, thereby momentarily ignoring the parking meter as we are all prone to do. However, when I passed by an hour later, the car was still there and the meter still said "expired."
Ordinarily, I would have forgotten the incident as quickly as I tend to forget the main idea of my economics reading, but today it stuck with me. This minor offense reflects a common hypocrisy in the American law enforcement system.
Police officers are not above the law. They are merely responsible for enforcing the law - not that this is a simple task. I have the utmost respect for police officers. They play a vital role in the maintenance of order in our society.
One function, however, which is disregarded when they do something as trivial as not pay the parking meter, is that of a role model. Human beings learn from examples, through observation, and it is hard to respect the officer who pulls you over on the highway for going 70 m.p.h. after you saw him cruise by earlier at 95.
Our society places a great deal of emphasis on the morals and characters of our leaders. We scrutinize the backgrounds of Presidents and Supreme Court Justices and sometimes even prevent them from serving our country due to some trivial "immoral" deviance in the past. Yet we allow police officers to get away with minor infractions in the interest of carrying out their duties.
While I by no means advocate increased enforcement of parking regulations or speeding laws - I think we would all agree that this is already done superfluously around the Upper Valley - police officers should give greater thought to the example which they are setting. For even though Dartmouth students are in Hanover primarily to learn about scholarly matters, we are also here to learn about life. And we continue to learn by example.
