I am writing to issue an urgent warning to Dartmouth students that you run -- don't walk -- to the room in Baker Library above the periodicals room, where you'll find the New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated (NHRSA). Learn to look up laws in this collection and learn what the laws in New Hampshire are, particularly those pertaining to "underage drinking," intoxication and protective custody.
It's apparently open season on students again, and the Hanover Police, as they were in the fall of '94 when the N.H. ACLU had to come to town and put an end to a rash of illegal arrests, are once again enforcing not N.H. law, but Dartmouth College regulations.
The more aware you are of what the laws are, the less chance you have of being brutalized by the police, as a student recently was, in the renewed Crusade Against Demon Rum. And the attitude among the "grownups" in the faculty and administration, except for me, seems to be that any means whatever, including illegal police activity, are justified in fighting this Scourge of Youth.
The real irony of the recent episode where the police brutalized a student they suspected had been drinking is that their brutality, and the fact that the student hadn't had a drop to drink, only distract us from the fact that even if the student had been drinking, indeed even if he had been blind drunk, and even if the Hanover Police had treated him as gently as a lamb in taking him into protective custody and to the police station, this still would have been illegal police activity.
The police have no right to take into protective custody anyone, regardless of age, who is not intoxicated. Nor do they have the right to remove even an intoxicated person from his own home, which is what a dorm room is, on the pretext of taking him into protective custody.
How can I say that the Hanover Police are enforcing Dartmouth policies rather than N.H. law when we've all been told by the College Committee on Alcohol and Other Drugs that Dartmouth policies are merely a matter of "complying with state and federal underage drinking laws?" Because that statement is absolutely false. There aren't any "federal underage drinking laws." Period. And the only N.H. statute that can be construed as such is NHRSA 179:10, which prohibits only underage possession of alcoholic beverages. Not underage consumption of such beverages, and not underage possession of alcohol (so that there can be no question of "internal possession," since internal possession of beverages is a physical impossibility).
Dartmouth's alcohol policies have for years been much more severe than N.H. statutes. That anyone would suggest otherwise is, put as charitably as I can, disingenuous.
In the fall of '94, when Steve Borofsky, the ACLU lawyer (and a Dartmouth alumnus) arrived in Hanover and met with the town and the College, the HPD immediately acknowledged they were guilty of making illegal arrests. They gave Borofsky their solemn promise this illegal activity would cease. Now it appears they are still not content to obey the law in the Crusade Against Demon Rum. Their new crime, and it is a crime, is to violate the conditions of protective custody, aided and abetted by Dartmouth's Safety and Security Officers.
The student who was recently brutalized is lucky he wasn't charged with some crime. And let me assure you that when charged with a crime in this country you are not presumed innocent until proven guilty. Rather you are presumed guilty until you take the time, trouble and considerable money to pay a lawyer to establish that you are, in fact, innocent.
This recent incident is not the first time the HPD has used "protective custody" as an excuse for harassing an underage drinker. Year before last they took into custody an underage student who had been drinking. They fingerprinted her, took mug shots and interrogated her, all in violation of NHRSA 172-B:3. When they discovered she had given them another student's name as her own, they charged her with violating NHRSA 641:4. Now this statute is called "False Reports to Law Enforcement," but the most cursory reading makes clear it only applies to the situation where you falsely report someone else of having committed a crime. It doesn't even remotely apply to any other sort of lying to the police. The student, though, not wanting to anger the police or the Hanover District Court by being the sort of smart-aleck who pleads not guilty or who gets a lawyer, pled guilty to a misdemeanor of which she clearly was not guilty. Judge Dasbach or Boswell was, I believe, seriously remiss in accepting the guilty plea, since it was based entirely on fear and ignorance of what the charge against her was. Now she has a criminal record for the rest of her life, and for a misdemeanor, that's going to look very serious to any prospective employer.
As I said in 1994, an underage kid's having a few drinks may entail a violation of the law, since to have a few drinks he or she probably has to be in possession of alcoholic beverages for a while. And no matter how politically correct the Crusade Against Demon Rum is, I think it is preposterous to maintain that this is a serious crime. Illegal police activity, however, I do regard as a serious crime; if the upholders of the law themselves commit crimes, our society is in deep trouble.
The laws I have mentioned here are not written in legalistic gobbledygook. They're in plain English, and you'd better learn them fast, before you become a victim of the Crusade, roughed up and dragged off to the police station and charged with some crime, even if you haven't had a thing to drink. Crusades and witch hunts aren't the least bit concerned with the legal rights of those they're out to get, and if you expect kindly parental treatment from Crusaders eager to slake their blood lust for sinners, you're a fool.
