It reminds me of a Winnipeg Blue Bomber football game that I attended a few weeks ago. I happened to attend one of the few games that they actually won. It was a decisive victory over the Riders. While I have to confess that it was not the outcome I had hoped for, what I witnessed in the stands that afternoon disturbed me more than the lopsided win over the Riders. What I witnessed were security guards, by the dozen, working feverishly to ensure that no inflatable toys were tossed, no stacks of beer cups exceeded 5 cups, or that fans did not carry more than one drink at a time into the stands. And the fans were willing participants in the game that the security guards were there to play. They were secretly storing up cups, blowing up beach balls and making attempts to distract the security from their posts. Several times chants of "tazer him!" were shouted as security guards removed offenders from the stands. All of this going on while their team is playing one of their strongest games.
That incident illustrated to me something that I've witnessed before. The level of resistance to enforcement increases as the level or presence of enforcement increases. Put simply the more you try to crack down on the rules, the greater the resistance there is to comply with the rules. Over the last couple of seasons the management of the Bombers have responded to complaints from fans about other unruly fans by increasing the security and police presence in certain sections. What has been lost in all of this is that the point of going to the game is to watch the action that is happening on the field, not the action in the stands.
Perhaps Katz and some of the other politicians need to learn from this and shift the attention of the electorate to a vision for community, inspiring people to noble citizenship rather than simply ratcheting up the enforcement for the minority of people breaking the law. Win people through inspiring them to love their neighbour, rather than promising more enforcement.
2 comments:
you are def on to something here
I think it is a vicious cycle, if police are being as silly as those security guards at that game (actually more accurately it seems to be the rules that were silly). But most police aren't out there to be silly. We need more police because people are morons, like the people at that game. People do NOT love their neighbour, and within a capitalist system I have my doubts a community vision apart from social reform is going to inspire such a thing.
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