Chapter 14: Darton State Redux

Wednesday, January 15, 2018

“Dispatch to One-Six-Three.”

“One-Six-Three to Dispatch, go ahead.”

“Dispatch to One-Six-Three, we have a request for you to report to Matucket State College to see Campus Police.”

“One-Six-Three to Dispatch, I’m in Paul Four-One with Patrolman Jenkins. Any details on what Campus Police wants?”

“Dispatch to One-Six-Three, no details, just a request for either you or Chief Crowley.”

Huh! I looked over at Jim Jenkins, a Senior Patrolman who had been out on a leave of absence and needed a few ride-arounds and a weapons requalification to be cleared for duty. He gave me a blank look and shrugged. Crowley was in Atlanta with Captain Abernathy at some conference. “One-Six-Three to Dispatch, copy going to Matucket State. One-Six-Three, out.”

I looked over at Jim. “Wonder what that’s all about?” I said.

“No clue. Who runs Campus Police?”

“Ralph Hurston. He was on Investigations forever, ran the Gang Task Force for a while, then switched to the Drug Task Force. He left us as a sergeant and was hired there as a lieutenant.” Ralph and I weren’t buddy-buddy, but we were friends, and our work together on the DTF/TRT takedown of the Holden family and their drug business in 2015 was behind my being named Georgia Peace Officer of the Year in 2016.

“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he said.

I nodded. I wondered what was going on. Although I had gotten my bachelor’s in history from Matucket State, it hadn’t been a great experience. The School of Humanities, which composed the English, History, Languages, and Arts Departments, was a notoriously liberal place. Soldiers and police were not welcome, and I had worked hard to stay under the radar. At the University of Georgia, in Atlanta, which was where I was getting my master’s, mostly online, I had nowhere near the negative pressure. Interestingly, the Matucket State School of Natural Sciences, where the Math and Computer Science Departments were, was much friendlier. Kelly, as a Vice Chairman in Computer Sciences, said it was because they were routinely exposed to facts, as opposed to opinions.

Campus Police was a small suite of offices in the Campus Facilities Building, hidden out back of the main campus by the Field House. Jim parked, and we went inside. I found a disconsolate looking young Patrolman, Willis Walston, sitting in the waiting room, and behind the reception desk, a secretary said, “Good! I’ll let the Lieutenant know you’re here!”

Even before she could call for him, Ralph came out of his office and said, “Great, come on in! You, too, Willis.” He looked over at Jim and said, “Might as well have everybody come in. Not sure if we’ve met, but I’m Ralph Hurston. I run Campus Police.” He shook hands with both me and Jim, and then motioned us into his office.

“What’s the problem, Ralph?” I asked.

He hooked a thumb over at Willis. “Your boy here had the sheer effrontery to take an English class in uniform. He’s been evicted.”

“Evicted?”

Ralph motioned to Willis and said, “Tell them what you told me.”

Willis looked unhappy but nodded. “Professor Hoover kicked me out of class. I don’t think he knew I was a cop until today, and I had to wear my uniform to class, so I wouldn’t lose any time changing into my uniform at shift change. When he came in the room, he told me that guns weren’t allowed on campus, and when I told him that didn’t apply to police officers, he told me that quote ‘no jackbooted thugs would be in any class he gave’ unquote and ordered me to leave. I protested, but he called the cops and ordered them to remove me. I didn’t get into it with them, but then he told me he was flunking me. I was brought over here and told to talk to the Lieutenant.”

I rolled my eyes in disbelief. I asked Ralph, “Who the hell is this guy?”

“Professor Hemingway Hoover, chair of the English department. He mostly teaches graduate classes, but he also teaches Shakespeare to undergrads.”

I looked at Willis. “Shakespeare?”

He gave me a guilty look and answered, “I’m an English major. It’s a requirement.”

“An English major?”

“So? You told me you’ve got a degree in history!”

Ralph and Jim laughed at that. I shrugged and said, “Fair enough.” To Ralph I said, “What’s this asshole’s problem with cops? Hemingway Hoover - why does that name ring a bell?”

“He’s the whistle guy.”

“Oh, brother!”

A big part of the problem was simply that Matucket State, like most colleges, had a crime problem. In this they were like every other part of society – put people together and some small percentage are criminals. However, unlike the rest of society, colleges did not want to acknowledge this basic tenet of human life. There were thousands of colleges across the country, and they were all competing for the same pool of high school graduates. They advertised themselves as safe places for parents to send the fruit of their loins for four years, after which they would have a wonderful shiny degree and go forth to earn big bucks as a college graduate. No parent wanted to pay tens of thousands of dollars every year and not be assured that Little Bobby and Little Suzy wouldn’t be wrapped in a cocoon of security. Nothing would be allowed to happen to these precious young spirits. They would be in a perfectly safe and secure environment.

To say the least, the results were schizophrenic. If you asked a college administrator, crime simply didn’t happen on their campus! Oh, they might have a campus safety office, but that simply handed out parking stickers and traffic tickets. A few unarmed patrols might ride around on bicycles or golf carts, and maybe there were a few courtesy phones around the campus in case some silly girl got nervous and felt she had to call somebody to walk her home.

When crime did happen, it was buried as deeply and darkly as possible. The victims of a crime were urged to not contact the police, but to call campus safety. No formal reports were taken, and nobody would call the police. No records were kept. If a student was guilty of a crime, even a serious crime like rape, they would be allowed to quietly transfer out. Victims would also be counseled to leave the school. Pretty much anything short of murder would be buried. Kelly and I had seen this first-hand. When I was on my first tour in Iraq and she was a freshman at Vanderbilt, she and some friends had gone to a party and one of the girls had been roofied; it was later determined that Kelly had been the target. There was a huge stink at the time, but no charges were made on the student who had attempted to roofie and rape her, and she and the girl who drank the drugged cocktail were both transferred out.

Slowly, across the nation some colleges were stepping up to the task of fixing the problems. Matucket State’s time was several years ago, when a serial rapist was caught after a coed made the mistake of reporting the crime to the police department and not campus safety. She was taken to Matucket General, and not the school infirmary, and a rape kit was performed. In short order detectives figured out what had happened and who the criminal was, and linked him to at least six other rapes, none of which were reported to the police by the college. There was a huge scandal, and the president of the college was fired, along with the head of the campus safety department.

Prior to the scandal, Matucket State Campus Safety was nothing more than unarmed rent-a-cops. As part of the program to fix the problem, Campus Safety was replaced by a police department with the same function and focus of the system at UGA in Athens. A lieutenant was hired to command the newly renamed department and the rent-a-cops were replaced with professional police officers. The bikes and golf carts were replaced with real police cars and reported crimes were treated like real crimes. Fortunately, none of this went against the MPD’s budget. It was perfectly legal for a college to hire its own police department, so long as they met the standards of the Georgia Peace Officer system, and the police went through one of the police academies. If they wanted to keep their jobs, the rent-a-cops were given eighteen months to make it through the academy. Some did, some retired, and some left because they couldn’t meet the standards (as in they had records and were criminals themselves!) When the first lieutenant retired and left, Ralph applied and was accepted. He retired from the MPD with twenty years and was hired at Matucket State with a promotion from Sergeant to Lieutenant to run the department.

This new system was not approved of by everybody. The School of Humanities was a hot bed of liberalism in all its kookiest forms and believed that police should not be allowed on campus. They firmly believed that the Campus Police Department should be disbanded, and unarmed security would be sufficient. They would be aided and abetted by what would come to be called ‘the whistle plan.’ Every student, male or female, would be issued a whistle. Then, whenever a criminal action was suspected, the student being threatened was to blow their whistle. All the other students in earshot were to come running, to join in blowing their whistles at the offending party, thus embarrassing him (him, of course, because he was certainly going to be a white man, all of whom were sexist, racist, and generally unpleasant sub-humans) and shaming him into a more socially acceptable behavior. Of course, this system would also be used to ensure that the entire campus would become a safe and nurturing environment for all students. If any student felt that they were not in a safe space and that they were being exposed to unpleasant thoughts or words, they would be expected to blow their whistle to point this out, so that political correctness would be enhanced throughout the school.

This screwball idea was presented in a formal meeting of the Board of Regents and was laughed out of the room. The only people on campus who thought it was practical were the egghead professors in the School of Humanities, led by the guy who thought it up, the new head of the English Department, Professor Hemingway Hoover.

“So why call me over?” I asked Ralph.

Ralph shrugged. “I wanted Crowley, but Bullfinch told me he and Abernathy were in Atlanta and wouldn’t be back until late. Then he reminded me that you had special insight into the hierarchy here, and you might be useful. He told me he’d have you come over.”

“Uh, huh.” I could feel a headache coming on. My ‘special insight’ was simply that I had a degree from here and my wife was a professor. “Any suggestions?”

Ralph gave me a wry smile. “I’d like to smack him with a two-by-four, but that’s probably unapproved and might not affect him anyway. It might even ruin a perfectly good two-by four!”

“I’m just trying to think of how many state and federal laws this guy thinks he can break!” Willis looked very hopeful when I said that. “Where is the good professor at this moment?” I asked.

Ralph turned to his computer and looked up schedules, then glanced at a clock. “He should be about halfway through Contemporary English Comparatives, in Buckner Hall.”

I turned to Willis. “Contemporary English Comparatives? Are you for real?” Willis flipped me off and I just turned back to Ralph. “I am liking your idea about the two-by-four. Where’s the president of the college?”

Ralph shrugged and picked up the phone. He made a call and then covered the mouthpiece. “He’s in the admin building.”

“Don’t let him leave.”

Ralph said as much to whoever he was talking to, and then hung up. “What’s the plan?”

“Send one of your guys to the classroom and drag him out.” I turned to Jim and said, “You go with him. If he gives you any grief let him know his other choice is to be handcuffed and be taken to the station, and he will surface at his arraignment next month.” To Ralph I said, “You, me, and Willis are going to the President’s office and barge in. Have them bring the good professor to meet us there. We will explain the facts of life. I will use small words without lots of syllables.”

Ralph laughed. “You really know how to make friends and influence people, Grim.”

“Screw him. This guy’s an overeducated asshole. It’s kind of expected from English majors...”

“Screw you, too, Sergeant, begging your pardon!” interrupted Willis.

I ignored him and continued, “ ... but the president has probably got a few brain cells left.”

“Why not? I still have my pension from the MPD to fall back on.” He called one of his officers, Drew Davis, and we sent Jim Jenkins with him. Ralph, Willis, and I drove over to the Administration Building.

“Didn’t these guys learn from Darton State two years ago?” I asked.

“Grim, this guy’s a department head. Not only does his shit not stink, but he also doesn’t shit. His feces magically disappear.”

“Christ!”

Jim took his cruiser over to Buckner with one of Ralph’s boys, and Ralph, Willis, and I drove in Ralph’s car to Admin. Once inside, we went straight to the office of the President. When we got there, his secretary said, “Is this really necessary? Doctor Hillgrove has a meeting scheduled in fifteen minutes.”

“The meeting is cancelled, unless Doctor Hillgrove doesn’t mind us arresting one of his professors,” I replied.

The secretary’s eyes popped open, and she immediately scurried into the President’s office. Through the wall we heard a loud, ‘WHAT?’, and then she scurried back out. “Doctor Hillgrove will see you now.”

I smiled at the others, and we went into the inner sanctum. He was standing up from his chair behind his desk and came around to greet us. “Gentlemen, how can I help the police department? What’s this about a professor, Ralph?”