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I have no problem with ASU PD using body cameras

Body camera
ASU Police Tempe Patrol Sergeant Katie Fuchtman shows off the body camera on Friday, Nov 13, 2015 at the ASU Tempe Police Department.

This month, ASU police officers began to wear body cameras. I’m not yet sure if I like the new policy, but I do think it’s an idea worth entertaining.

This is the story of my first, and only, interaction with the ASU Police Department. I understand that police officers do great things every day, and I’m sure they also do things every day that are much worse than what I’m about to tell you. But this is my own experience from the fall of 2014 that caused me to mistrust some police officers.

It was the beginning of my freshman year. I lived in the Palo Verde dorms on the Tempe campus. I’d spent four hours of a Friday night doing a last-minute essay that I submitted around 11:58 p.m., right before the midnight deadline. Feeling stiff from sitting for so long, I decided to go outside and take a walk (not a crime).

Read More: ASU Police introduces body cams for added transparency

I went over to Palm Walk because I figured that was the best way to avoid harassment from homeless people.

For the record, I have a developmental disorder that makes me clumsy, but that shouldn’t have mattered because being clumsy is not a crime.

I bring that up because, if I don’t actively try to control the way I walk, I tend to swing my arms excessively and have a lot of bounce in my step (still not a crime).

In high school, kids occasionally called me Donkey Kong, comparing my gait to that of a gorilla. I would occasionally walk into class and hear someone say something like, “Hey Fitz, I saw you driving to school today. I wasn’t sure if it was you at first, but then you threw a banana peel out the sunroof. You know, because you’re a 'Mario Kart' character.” 

Also, on a typical day, I’ll usually fall off of at least one sidewalk. Like I’ll be walking somewhere, and I’ll accidentally step off the edge of the sidewalk, causing me to fall several inches and lose my balance (not a crime).

As I was saying, I was on Palm Walk, trying to unwind from the stress of doing an assignment at the last minute. Then, out of nowhere, these three overweight, 30-something men appeared behind me. I remember one of them was wearing a Kansas City Chiefs jersey and a backward baseball cap.

Since they were in the middle of a college campus at midnight, I figured they were lost and needed me to give them directions.

“What’s your name?” the one in the Chiefs jersey asked me.

So I told him my first name. But the questions kept coming.

“How old are you?”

I told him I was 18 years old, my actual age at the time.

“Where are you going?” he asked semi-aggressively.

“Just taking a walk,” I responded, “I’m kind of out of it because I spent all night finishing an assignment.”

Apparently that wasn’t a sufficient answer. “Where are you coming from?” he asked with absolutely no consideration for how uncomfortable he was making me.

“PV Main over there,” I said, pointing toward my dorm, “That’s where I live.”

He took a metal badge out of his pocket. “Yeah, we're the police," he said with an almost-malicious cockiness in his voice. "Have you been drinking tonight?” 

“No,” I told him truthfully.

“I’m gonna need to see your ID,” he said. So I took my Sun Card out of my wallet and gave it to him. “No, I need you driver’s license,” he said rudely. 

Sorry, this is my first interrogation, is what I wanted to tell him, but didn’t.

He took out a little device with a white tube on the end of it, “I need you to blow into this.” Having never used a breathalyzer before, I took a normal sized breath and blew. He handed it back to me, “No, you need to blow hard. Like it’s a balloon.” I took a slightly bigger breath and tried again. “Still not enough air. One more time,” he said. So I took the biggest breath I could, and a reading finally registered.

The Chiefs fan stared at it for a while. I guess the machine takes some time for it to do its thing. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I was still nervous because strange things always seem to happen to me.

After what felt like forever, the gadget finally gave him a verdict. “Zeros!” he said to his colleagues in amazement. “You’re fine. Go home. Go home and do your homework,” he told me (I guess he wasn’t listening when I told him I had already finished).

I didn't want to go home, and I had no legal obligation to go home, but I didn't want to cause any more trouble, so I started to walk back to my dorm. Once I was 50 or so feet away, I heard him loudly say, “Out of it!” to his partners, laughing hysterically.

Incidents like this one are the reason why I don’t mind experimenting with having police officers wear cameras. I don’t think Chiefs Guy should be punished or anything for wrongly suspecting me of consuming alcohol, but I do think the people in charge of ASU PD should have a good general idea of what happens on campus. They should have access to as much information as possible in order to decide which strategies work, which ones are a waste of time and which officers (God forbid) abuse their power.

Related Links:

Albuquerque incident proves effectiveness of police body cameras

Main takeaway from Ferguson is necessity of police cameras


Reach the columnist at cmfitzpa@asu.edu or follow @CodyFitzStories on Twitter.

Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.

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