Cause and effect

As a rule I never read Speak Out. There have just been too many baseless or even ridiculous claims made by people with limited knowledge or no access to the facts surrounding certain issues.

In my years as a law enforcement officer, I have heard firsthand accounts of incidents I was personally involved in that bore no consistency to actual fact. Most of these occasions are simply people talking to hear the sound of their own voices, but sometimes it is a case of not really understanding the entire issue. I think many of these complaints could be resolved through simple dialogue.

There are times I see a professional doing a certain thing that may not make sense to me on the outside. Many times when I have seen highway crews standing around and thought that those guys should be working. In reality they may be waiting for concrete to set up. I see train crews stop a train and block a crossing and think, "Why can't they just move down a little and let me by." In reality there may be some mechanical reason they can't move at that moment.

These same kinds of situations are seen in my job too. I was brought a copy of the March 22 paper in which someone in Speak Out was upset by my officers working traffic on I-55. The title of the piece was "In-town policing."

In the body of this comment its author stated, "I can't understand them not wanting to protect their people in town." The author held the belief that the residents of this town were being shortchanged by having one of my officers on the interstate and not in a neighborhood. I would like to explain that situation in more detail. Let me start from the beginning.

Police work must be taken in a holistic manner, meaning every part of it is just as important as every other part. You must factor in causation and effect, meaning allowing "A" to happen causes "B."

In looking at the 118 motor vehicle accidents we responded to last year, a high percentage of them take place on the interstate. Nearly all of the serious accidents occur on the interstate. The highest contributing factor after alcohol consumption is speed. This is confirmed by the fact that we routinely give speeding tickets out there in the neighborhood of 90 to 95 mph.

It is my intent that the residents of this town be able to merge onto I-55 in a safe manner and not have to worry about some person blowing through town doing close to 100 mph. Remember causation. Lower speeds should equal fewer accidents.

Having this officer out there also allows us to monitor for signs of impaired drivers. Fewer drunken drivers should equal fewer accidents. We have had a plethora of DWI cases in recent months. In the last few months we have charged 21 people with alcohol-related driving offenses.

Just a few days ago a report crossed my desk and I noted the blood alcohol level of the suspect driving to have been 0.217 percent. That is over two and a half times the legal limit.

Someone passing my officer on the interstate during the arrest of this intoxicated driver may think, "Why are they out here harassing people."

The fact is we aren't there to harass anybody. We are there to make all of Scott City safer. That includes the very substantial portion of I-55 that is in the incorporated city limits of this town.

Please believe me when I tell you our job would be easier if we pulled back and stopped doing search warrants, stopped doing traffic enforcement and stopped doing code enforcement. We could be some of the most well-liked people around.

As long as I'm the chief of police, that will never happen. We will continue to do the best we can for everybody. We are not going to catch everyone who needs to be caught, and bad things will on occasion still happen, but not because we didn't try to prevent them.

I can't always say the things that people want to hear. In this case I can't tell you that there won't be a police car on I-55 tonight. There might well be. I can tell you, though, it's not because we don't want to protect our people. It's because we want to protect them.

Don Cobb is the Scott City police chief.