Pioneer Square/Fri March 5/6:20 am: Officer Gregory Fliegel reports: “At approximately 0610 hours, I was dispatched to investigate a robbery that had just occurred. I arrived and contacted complainant, who stated that the suspect had taken a bag of sunflower seeds off the shelf and walked out of the store without making any attempt to pay for them. The complainant then followed suspect out of the store and confronted her about the merchandise. When he told her to pay, she pulled out a key and stated something to the effect of ‘Go ahead and I’ll stab you with this.’

“The complainant went back into the store and while there, the suspect returned and this time grabbed several candy bars off of the shelf, and again exited without making any attempt to pay for the merchandise.

“While conducting my interview, I was advised that [another officer] had captured a possible suspect on Fourth Avenue South. The suspect began acting hysterical and for safety reasons, she was placed in handcuffs. I transported complainant to the location, and while there he positively ID’d her. She also had a bag of sunflower seeds and two Hershey candy bars with her. The merchandise was photographed and returned to complainant. A receipt showing the merchandise value was submitted into evidence.”

One might say that the crime in this report is really insignificant, a complete waste of time to record in such detail, too trivial a task for a police officer. But that is not the right attitude. A better attitude would enable you to see the most important thing that happens in this report: a criminal produces a crime.

Let’s turn for a moment to a wonderful passage in Marx’s Theories of Surplus Value: “A philosopher produces ideas, a poet poems, a clergyman sermons, a professor compendia, and so on. A criminal produces crimes. If we look a little closer at the connection between this latter branch of production and society as a whole, we shall rid ourselves of many prejudices. The criminal produces not only crimes but also criminal law…”

Marx is not joking. He is dead serious. If the criminal stops doing what he/she does, producing crime, not only will the institution of criminal law vanish but also a lot of jobs (many of which have great health-care insurance and pensions). Marx continues: “The criminal produces the whole of the police and of criminal justice, constables, judges, hangmen, juries, etc.; and all these different lines of business, which form equally many categories of the social division of labour, develop different capacities of the human spirit, create new needs and new ways of satisfying them.”

Best of all, however, Marx explains that the criminal’s crimes produce high and low art: “He produces not only compendia on Criminal Law, not only penal codes and along with them legislators in this field, but also art, belles lettres, novels, and even tragedies, as not only Müllner’s Schuld and Schiller’s Räuber, but also Sophocles’s Oedipus and Shakespeare’s Richard the Third. The criminal breaks the monotony and everyday security of bourgeois life.” As you can see, the crime in the report is by no means trivial; it is very, very productive. recommended

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

18 replies on “Police Beat”

  4. You forgot to mention that, the criminals make possible crime reporting, which is giving you a job, further enhancing the local economy by virtue of the earned currency you return to local businesses.

  9. I think Marx got it wrong here. Were all criminals to vanish, I do not think Crime Enforcement employees would be bereft a job; I think a new “crime” would be created for them to persecute instead.

    Discuss, if you will.

  10. A sociology teacher once told me that one function of crime is that it helps to clearly define what is acceptable and unacceptable. In a society with only extreme behavior(rapists on one end, saints on the other), the middle ground would be of unknown stigma. It is only when people run the gamut of behavior that we can come to a consensus on what behavior is “okay” to most of society. Or so goes the theory.

  11. I seem to have commented on a future event.

    $15 gets you lotto numbers for next week. Of course, they may not be the numbers eventually drawn, but they will certainly be a collection of numbers that could possibly be drawn.

  12. Remember, one day not long from now, you’ll be suffering from delusional attitudes and lack of inhibition like many of the really old tea baggers, and we’ll have to arrest you for shoplifting shiny coins from other people while dropping your trousers.

    Or, you could just become a soccer hooligan, and help us win the World Cup bid.

  13. so… does that mean that a criminal can rightfully yell to a cop while he’s being handcuffed “You should be thanking ME that you and your kids have health insurance! Jerk!”

    Love it Charles.

  14. @9 “Society as a whole is in desperate need of new vices, and there aren’t enough criminal acts to go around! So we need to criminalize more human behavior. … It’s almost impossible to drive a car … without committing some sort of crime.” –J.G. Ballard

  18. f*ck charles, you just boggle me sometimes. do you believe half the stuff you put up here? should the doctors thanks the shooters? the fireman thank the arsonists, the rape counselors thanks the rapists? why repeat this shit? it’s 10th grade STONER DEBATE CLUB fodder, and you have a job keeping it alive? shit, let’s debate real issues. i’ve worked enough retail to know that it’s wise to pick my battles. that this shopkeeper picked this one -ok, fine. that’s his choice. i’ve made mine, and yes, i PROFILE. and i’m sure that makes your dreads curl, and sure, people with nothing got nothing to lose and all that, but i’m not getting rich – i’m employing people! so they don’t steal candybars! we’re playing by the rules, to keep the social fabric tight. you REALLY think we should give weight and time to those that want to unravel it? really? you want to re-distribute wealth? fine. but let’s do it within the norms of this social pact. not stealing from shopkeepers. i’m wasting my time writing this, i know it.

Comments are closed.