Historically, bar raids by Madison police have garnered at least as much space as any other issue on this page.
This much of the debate seems reasonably obvious: Bar raids do not deter underage students from drinking. They do not make bars or University of Wisconsin students’ lives any safer. And they certainly do not represent the most judicious use of the ever-increasing resources being poured into the Madison Police Department.
These arguments are sufficient to warrant serious reform in police practices. What’s missing in this debate is a realistic picture of just how much is lost in time and resources to both these exercises in futility and their negative effects. From this perspective, police bar raids in Madison become not just a problem warranting reform, they become a situation worthy of outrage.
In the past week alone, I spoke with two students who were bullied and harassed by police officers attempting to prove they had presented false identification to the police during a bar raid. Their stories are illuminating.
In both cases, as police questioned the student, it became clear there was no real evidence of anything being amiss. The police were forced to release them, albeit after significant periods of questioning. But an hour of police questioning wasn’t enough for either of these pressing dangers to the community. In the first case, after receiving multiple phone calls the following week from police, the student finally referred them to an attorney for further inquiries. The calls stopped.
The second story is much worse. The police did not know how to locate a student who they had questioned the previous weekend, so they started by calling the student’s parents to get their address and contact information. When that failed, they found the address of the student’s sibling, also a UW student, and showed up at the sibling’s door unannounced. The interaction included threats of obstruction of justice, wherein the officer refused to allow this person to call their attorney and promised that if the student’s address was not provided, the officer would march up to the Offices of the Dean of Students, get the “suspect’s” class schedule and pull them out of class for questioning. Remember, this was all just to talk to the student. There is no legal principle behind this, because there was no evidence of foul play. This officer was going to these lengths just to try to locate a person whom they had no evidence of actually having committed a crime. The supposed offense worth such lengthy police investigation? Allegedly having a fake ID on a Friday night at a bar.
Putting aside just how much emotional distress, lost time and financial burden this officer’s actions placed on the student and their family, consider the backwards system of priorities this represents on the part of the MPD. The myth about bar raids is that they are just a quick “scan” by police. Officers check ID’s, write a few tickets, and get on their way to more pressing matters. If these cases don’t utterly disprove that notion, I don’t know what can.
The question still remains: “What for?” Am I safer when I go to the bars because the police have detained and questioned a student for an hour about a suspicious ID while ignoring the thousands of drunk people picking fights on the sidewalk? Is the student being questioned any safer, or more likely to abstain from drinking heavily in the future?
Further yet, because bar raids so often turn into cases of police harassment and bullying of students who rarely know their rights, they directly lead to a greater amount of animosity and distrust between police and students. It is difficult to modify negative beliefs about police personnel once ingrained, and police departments would be well advised to take this into account when considering the effects their current actions may have on their future sources of funding.
I began this piece by noting that the issue of bar raids is not a new one. It is also not one in which any semblance of meaningful progress has been made. Student representatives have written and spoken out considerably against the practice, but never obtained a critical mass of support in this endeavor. I do not mean to place undue blame on these leaders. It has been my experience that the more familiar you become with most student leaders, the more impressed you are by the breadth of their knowledge and dedication to student causes. But if they are to truly represent student interests, this issue has to be addressed. Pull some strings. Do what you are training to do later in life. If that doesn’t work, come back to us and be clear about who is opposing you, what forces are at work and what, if anything, can be done about it. At the very least, move the issue forward. Stories like these can not be ignored.
Alec Slocum ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in philosophy and legal studies.
