BRATTLEBORO — The police harassment issue has gone from a slightly amusing nuisance to a downright menace. Allow me to explain.
You might have heard of an incident where a group of teenagers were told to, and I quote, “Stop sitting on benches.” by the police [“A decree - nay, a demand - to remove Brattleboro benches,” The Commons, July].
Today, I witnessed an incident tantamount in its ridiculousness. An officer of the law, one M. Gorman, and another officer whose name I was unable to obtain, drove up in their cruiser to a pair of young girls who were drawing hearts and carrots and the like, with chalk, on a giant red brick wall, and told them to stop.
The officers of the law, while taking down the girls' names and addresses, then told them to clean up the chalk markings. A group of teenagers, perched as they are wont to be on a park bench, questioned the motives of the officers, and were told to vacate the premises by a very angry Officer Gorman. The teenagers begrudgingly obliged.
It should be noted at this time that chalk is a porous sedimentary rock substance that is notorious for washing off in the rain, and that the girls in question were not drawing crude or vulgar things, but were, as I see it, decorating an otherwise drab giant red brick wall.
Is there truly nothing else for the police to be doing? Am I led to believe that Brattleboro is so crime-free and pristine that the police, in lieu of the absence of actual crimes and misdemeanors, have resorted to harassing little girls?
I, for one - perhaps for many - say that this needs to stop.