I
must admit to having an enjoyable 4th of July week. The week was split between four days at the beach
and then back home visiting with family.
It was a nice, relaxing week.
Maybe
the most enjoyable part is a calm Monday morning afterwards. For the previous four years, I braced myself
for the complaints against wildlife officers that always came in on the Monday
morning after a busy holiday weekend, especially the 4th of July. Occasionally the complaints had a measure of
justification. Officers do sometimes
bump citizen’s boats during checks and cause damage (heavy boat traffic create
wakes that make checks difficult for even the most skilled boat handlers). Those calls are easy to handle – we repaired
the damage. And on even rarer
occasions, officers say something to a boater that shouldn’t be said by a
professional officer. Again, those are
easy to address.
The
difficult complaints are those in which the officer has done nothing wrong, but
the citizen did not like the officer’s actions.
Those complaints seem to be on the rise throughout the law enforcement
community. The pivot point that balances
personal freedoms and public safety has shifted. One of the most obvious is with airport
security. Shortly after the 9/11
terrorist attacks, the public applauded the increase in security at our
airports. By 2010, people were beginning to question whether all of the screenings and scans were truly necessary. That same shift is happening in boating law enforcement.
After
a high profile accident such as the one on Lake Norman in 2011 where
a woman lost her arm, high officer presence and aggressive patrol efforts
are expected and encouraged by the public.
However, as the TSA has found, time erases those bad memories. Last year, a website devoted to Lake Norman
took a very anti-law enforcement stance and accused officers of overzealous
tactics (the moderator of this site has been charged on and off the water for
alcohol related offenses).
In
particular, wildlife officers have wrestled with public concerns that there are
“too many bluelights on the water” in the Wrightsville Beach/Masonboro Inlet
area. This is an area with heavy tourist traffic and a high officer presence has been viewed by a vocal minority
to be bad for business. However, a
combination of boaters who are unfamiliar with tidal influenced waters and
heavy traffic creates problems
for boaters and those who are trying tap
into those tourist dollars.
So
where is the freedom pivot point? Can it be in a fixed location or will it always float back and forth as the social climate changes? This
was a question that the founding fathers had to deal with as they wrote the constitution. It is an issue at the core of most modern political
issues – how do we balance the freedoms of an individual against the needs of
the community as a whole? Muddying the
answer is the knowledge that some folks will make really poor decisions that
place themselves or others are risk of injury. I have found over the years that most people want to be left alone, but want their neighbor policed so their neighbor's freedoms don't negatively impact them. Total freedom for me, but not so much for you.
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| Pontoon nearly capsizes near Masonboro Inlet - 7/4/14 http://luminanews.com/ |
In
the middle of that debate are officers being pulled by those at either end of
the argument. It is a reminder that Independence
Day is about much more than fireworks and hotdogs.
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