Albert Paschall
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Somedays:
Protection from abuse:
PA State Police deserve credit, not abuse for their efforts
by Albert Paschall
I feel like I’m abused almost every day any
more. Abused by governments that take my money to give to other people,
abused by whiney complaining people who used to make money off the Internet
and now have to trade in their luxury cars, abused by those who take
a whole agency and shake it down because of the actions of a few.
Abuse in my job is nothing compared to what other people
have to put up with.
It’s real abuse when you have to scrape 12 dead
people from cars and deal with nearly 300 injured ones in just four
days.
It’s real abuse when one of the high notes of
your job is to stop speeding cars on lonely highways in the middle of
the night and go up to a car that might have 4 armed, drunk or drugged
people in it, and ask for their license knowing that any help is at
least a half hour away.
It’s real abuse to get called to go to a domestic
disturbance off a rural highway knowing you only the call because neighbors
heard gunfire.
It’s real abuse to have to push a teenagers’
car off the side of the road from the passing lane in a driving thunderstorm
in the middle of the night because its engine quit
That’s the kind of abuse we pay some 4,500 members
of the Pennsylvania State Police. From Lake Erie to the Delaware River
State Troopers have the responsibility of patrolling most of the state’s
45,000 miles of highway and act as local law enforcement to several
hundred rural communities all over the commonwealth.
On Memorial Day Weekend on highways patrolled by the
State Police 12 people were killed in car accidents in the state and
272 were injured. The State Troopers got the unenviable job of dealing
with the dead and their distraught families.
In addition to the joys of their highway duties the
state police actually have criminal jurisdiction over every city, county
and municipality in Pennsylvania. It is their responsibility to coordinate
police activities when drug runners, murderers and other purveyors of
mayhem cross municipal jurisdiction. Its our state troopers who run
the largest and most effective anti-drug task forces in the state.
For fun state police officers get to go to shopping
malls and parks and teach new parents how to hook up their baby seats
safely, and beg people not to drink and drive.
Now that’s an abusive job.
There have been some wild allegations in this state
about sexual abuse and predatory practices in the last six years in
the Pennsylvania State Police ranks. With one heinous conviction the
numbers look like they’re shaping up to be less than 1/10th of
1% of the force. Now it is true that in police ranks any thought of
abuse is unacceptable but in some of the published cases bad humor may
be just that. Colonel Jeffrey Miller, appointed this year as state police
commissioner has vowed to route out abuse and enforce zero tolerance
sexual discrimination polices while personally recommending independent
review of harassment claims.
He deserves the chance to get that done without being
second guessed.
State Trooper’s do get abused. Like the one
last Friday night, in the worst thunder storm we’ve seen summer,
who pushed my teenaged son’s car off to the shoulder from the
passing lane where it had suddenly died. He called for help, made sure
help arrive and left the scene before I got there.
Someday I hope I hope I get to thank him. He shouldn’t
be abused like that.
Albert Paschall
Senior Commentator
The Lincoln Institute of Public Opinion Research, Inc.
