Not long ago, I was sitting in my room, staring at my computer and trying to think of something to write. The project was not going well. Around 11 p.m., some friends, who are all in an astronomy class together, showed up with the novel idea of going stargazing. This struck me as a particularly diverting means of procrastination, so naturally I agreed.

We drove out of town and parked on the side of a semi-deserted stretch of highway. It was a beautiful night, and it felt good to be out in the fresh air, far away from town. With the windows down and the stereo on, we sang and danced in the middle of the road. Some of us lounged on the hood and roof of the car staring at the sky while others wandered off into the ditch for reasons of their own (this was, I should point out, a substance-free event).

It was truly a festive atmosphere; perhaps too festive, since we had scarcely been there 25 or 30 minutes before not one, but two Ames police cars pulled up with their lights flashing.

They wanted to know what we were doing.

“Ritual sacrifice,” I thought. “What’s it look like?”

But we stifled the impulse to laugh at them — they were, after all, just doing their job — and explained that we were simply stargazing. The cops stared at us and scratched their heads for a long time. There was obviously nothing illegal in progress, and they must have been aware that they looked pretty silly. Finally, unable to contain myself, I muttered, “Why, is that against the law?”

Clearly embarrassed, they mumbled something about a report of “somebody being held down” or some such nonsense (the three other Daily writers who were present can confirm this) and got back in their cars. We all looked at one another incredulously. The word on all of our lips was a dumbfounded “What??!!” The police didn’t stick around to explain.

We recalled, as best as we could, the events of the evening, and none of us could think of anything that could have been construed by even the most nearsighted passing driver as a case of anyone being “held down” against their will. Undoubtedly, some vigilant citizen had spotted a group of young people engaged in suspicious activity on the side of the road and called the cops to check it out. Not all that unreasonable, really.

But when the police arrived on the scene and saw that no crime had in fact been perpetrated, it should have been a simple matter of admitting their mistake, apologizing and wishing us a pleasant evening before going back to Donutland. What we couldn’t understand was why they felt the need to lie to us, to make up some outrageous story, as if this was “Real Stories of the Highway Patrol.”

I must admit this was the second time I’ve run afoul of the law here in Ames. Last spring, I had the misfortune of being spotted on Main Street after dark looking a tad too scruffy and sporting a rather sinister-looking overcoat. I had been walking from my place of employment to the nearest bus stop when a police car pulled up beside me and an exuberant cop jumped out demanding to see my ID. He wouldn’t tell me why, and seemed genuinely disappointed when I didn’t try to fight him or run away. At last, he grudgingly stammered out some contrived story about somebody breaking storefront windows in the area. Somehow, the fact that I was willing to present my ID which proved that I was not the elusive vandal.

Practically everybody who grew up in a small town knows dozens of stories like these. Some high school friends of mine, for instance, once got pulled over because they had been driving in the vicinity of where the police suspected another school was holding its senior keg that night. Their car was searched under the pretense that somebody had been smashing headlights with a crowbar, and they were looking for the guilty crowbar.

One friend of mine from another Iowa town shared a harrowing story of being held at gunpoint by jumpy cops who caught her and her friends trespassing on a golf course which was adjacent to one of her friend’s back yard. It was unclear, in fact, whether they were actually on the golf course and not in the yard, but in any case, these particular cops felt it necessary to pull their guns. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but the police did confiscate the “alcohol,” which turned out to be several bottles of fruit juice. And there’s plenty more where that came from — I won’t even start with mall cops and campus cops…

If you share stories like these with people who come from large cities, particularly areas where crime is a big problem, they’ll get a good laugh. City cops are usually too busy chasing real criminals to run around the countryside all night hoping to bust underage drinkers and out-of-season hunters. While it’s certainly nice that crime is relatively under control here in the rural midwest, it also has a bit of a downside, in that it leaves our small town cops with perhaps a bit too much free time on their hands.

I can’t really blame police officers for trying to do their jobs, which most of the time they do quite well. But there is an undeniable Barney Fife component to many rural police forces, a fringe element that’s just a little too eager. One can’t help but wonder if they don’t make the occasional random, completely unwarranted stop just to break up the monotony of small town law enforcement.

Every small town high school senior can identify the one or two officers on the local P.D. who seem hell-bent on busting anyone under 30, regardless of whether any laws have been broken. These are usually youngish guys who seem to have something to prove, whose amateurish police work and Dirty Harry attitudes generally prove an embarrassment to the more level-headed cops in town.

Fortunately, this type of officer is rare and usually harmless. But not always, of course… Not so long ago a similar kind of cowboy mentality claimed the life of an Iowa City man, shot to death in his own apartment by marauding cops who mistook his telephone, of all things, for a weapon.

To their credit, the officers who showed up to investigate our nocturnal revels the other night did not seem excessively trigger-happy, although with the backup they brought with them, you’d have thought they were up against Iraqi terrorists or gun-toting gang members. Happily, the situation was resolved without bloodshed, and we’ll all live to stargaze another day. In the meantime, I just hope they never catch me on the phone.

---

Josh Raulerson is a junior in journalism and mass communication and English from Decorah.