Works of Lars Eighner at Lars Eighner's Homepage

After two years of hitchhiking and sleeping in the rough, my dog Lizbeth and I began camping in a vacant building in Austin at the sufferance of the owner. I feared the law in the form of brown-suited inspectors with clipboards, but knew I wasn't likely to be rousted in the middle of the night and so stopped cringing at the sight of police cars.

One night in April of 1990 I went to the Stop 'N Go across the street for a bottle of tonic water and a cup of ice. When I got to the self-service soda fountain, I could not find an ice cup. There were plenty of soda cups, but if I used a soda cup for ice, I would have to pay the price of a soda. I turned toward the clerk who was behind the counter on the other side of the store. She knew what I wanted before I spoke. "Use a police cup," she said.

"What?" Of course, I had heard her. It took me a moment to understand.

"Use a police cup!" She meant the plastic foam cups that the police get free coffee in. They are labelled "For Police Use Only." Of course, the cups do not belong to the police department, but to the store.

I got a cup and pressed it against the lever under the ice chute. I heard someone yelling something, but was watching the ice server intently. It had a way of doling out a chunk at a time at first and then unloading a torrent of ice that can make a big mess.

A man grabbed my hand and squeezed it so tightly the cup was crushed. I was stunned by this sudden violent action and could not turn my head enough to see who my attacker was. The man twisted my wrist and pulled my arm behind my back before I realized he was wearing a police uniform.

I heard, in that sort of distant disinterested way one hears the words of an anesthesiologist, "I told him to use it." After a moment I understood, the problem was the cup.

"She told me to use it," I said.

"I told him to use it," said the clerk again. The officer released me and without a word disappeared behind the soda fountain where the condiments and doughnuts were kept.

I got another police cup and filled it with ice.

I paid for my purchases with many small coins and, as the clerk counted them, I looked at the officer, who stood behind the next customer. He realized I was memorizing his nameplate. "Be sure you spell it right," he said.

I was talking to 911 on the phone outside the store when he got in his car and drove off to the west. "I want to report being assaulted by a police officer." I had to repeat it.

When the senior sergeant arrived at the store, he said the officer believed that people take police cups from the store in order to discard them in inappropriate places, thereby creating the impression that the police are litterbugs. But I could not be redirected from my point: "If I had done what he did, I'd be on my way to jail. But he is going on shift as if nothing has happened."

If I wanted to pursue it, a course the senior sergeant strongly advised against, I would have to go the police station in the daytime and talk to Internal Affairs. The senior sergeant left.

The power of the police in dealing with a homeless person is arbitrary and absolute. I felt I would not be safe again until someone else knew and the police knew that someone else knew.

That night by the light of my Kerosene lamps I wrote to City Council Member Max Nofziger. Nofziger began running for council when he was a street-corner flower vendor. I thought I might have a sympathetic hearing from him. I didn't dare go downtown to speak to the Internal Affairs officer because the landlord had warned me he would put me on the street again if I left his property unattended. I didn't know if I could get any form of legal aid; my experience in applying for other forms of public assistance cause me to doubt it.

All remedies seemed to require long hours away from the property and the bus fares to go from office to office until I found the right one, if there was a right one. Moreover, I began to think it might be a dangerous thing to become a cause célèbre and more dangerous to win one if at the end I remained as vulnerable as any homeless person is to the power of the police.

I spent a paranoid month. Once when I had a quarter, I called the Council Member's office and left a message on his machine. Cynical friends suggested that Council Member Nofziger probably had a garage full of unopened and unanswered mail. I hoped that was not so, but I could think of nothing better to do than hope. I was cringing again at the sight of a police car.

Nofziger

At last the letter of apology from the police department arrived. It stated that an internal affairs investigation "found that the officer's actions were inappropriate" and that he was counseled "regarding the matter." It's signed by Assistant Chief of Police Ray Sanders who asked me to "please accept my apologies for the officer's actions. Be assured that the Austin Police Department is dedicated to excellence."

I did not take much satisfaction in the letter. Clearly nothing would happen to the officer comparable to what would certainly have happened to me if I had committed a similar act. Did I ever think, even in the moment that I first called 911, that the real world would yield more justice than the letter of apology I got? The letter mentioned Council Member Nofziger. At least they knew someone else knew.