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By sheer coincidence, I was in Boulder, attending a conference on tourism in the American West, on the day of the Hill riots last spring. Martha and I left town before anything started burning -- our guess was that in pristine Boulder, the police didn't get upset until they heard that someone had thrown tobacco into the fire -- but still, there could be some money in this.
That is, if I could remember anything that might work for a tip to Boulder County Crimestoppers, which is offering $1,000 rewards for help in nailing last spring's rioters.
For guidance at snitching (I was pretty good at it until
about third grade, when a big kid beat me up for ratting on
him, and I've fallen out of practice), I checked the
Boulder Crimestopper web site. There I learned that
Crime effects everyone.
Boulder County is more puritanical than I had imagined.
To effect
means to cause or bring about. So they're
saying that everyone
has been brought about by
crime.
The act that brings about everyone is called
sex,
which is apparently a crime in Boulder County,
even if perpetrated between consenting married adults.
No rewards were offered for information on this offense, though, so I didn't turn myself in.
However, I did read elsewhere that the disturbances last
May resulted from a police crackdown on underage drinking
in Boulder, where law-enforcement authorities have
identified alcohol as public enemy no. 1.
Underage drinking has changed since I was underage. Back then, Colorado allowed 3.2 beer if you were 18 or older. But Congress decided to strip highway funds from any state that didn't raise its drinking age to 21, even for 3.2 beer, and our legislators -- a majority of them local-control state-rights Republicans who obviously love money more than the principles they supposedly espouse -- went right along with it.
Thus if you're under 21, as most college students are, all potable forms of alcohol are illegal. And the Boulder police, slow as they may be at finding murder suspects, are right on top of this.
I first read of the Boulder police zeal in a column by
C.C. Knight, foreign correspondent for the Mesa County
(Grand Junction) Independent Enterprise: What if when
you left a party -- whether you were a legal drinker or
not, or planning to drive or just stumble home -- a cop was
there to check your ID, give you a breathalyzer and get you
thrown out of school, even if you blow only 0.001?
For some reason, I know that columnists can slide into hyperbole, so I called a young woman here. She was a high-school classmate of my older daughter's, and she was graduated from CU Boulder this spring. Were the Boulder Police really this zealous?
Yes, they are,
she said. She started college in
the fall of 1993, and then if you were out with a beer,
and a cop was approaching, you could toss the beer can into
a recycling bin, and unless you were staggering drunk, the
cop would just tell you to go home and behave
yourself.
But now, the recycling bins are gone. And even if you
don't have a beer with you, the cop will ask for an ID, and
if you're underage, you'll get the breath test and most
likely, a ticket.
The ticket, she said, means $50 for five hours of
compulsory re-education at substance-abuse classes, so
I'm sure somebody is making some good money off
this.
She recalled a party one summer evening at a house.
The doors were open because it was about 100 degrees.
Suddenly we noticed a bunch of 18- and 19-year-olds hanging
around outside, and they were coming in and getting beer
and we tried to chase them away. I think they were sent by
the police, to set us up, because suddenly the cops roar up
with sirens and march into the house -- no warrants -- and
start giving breath tests and tickets.
When she started college in Boulder, I had a lot of
respect for the police. They seemed to keep things under
control without being heavy-handed -- if you got in
trouble, it was for something you deserved to get in
trouble for.
But now, if you're a student in Boulder, you get in
trouble every time you go out, no matter how well you
behave. Or they'll come by the house if you stay home. The
police really are out to get you.
Boulder Police Chief Tom Koby recently said he would
have been justified in issuing shoot to kill
orders
last spring. Now there are rewards posted for tips that
could lead to the arrest of returning students (this proves
that Boulder is at the heart of the emerging information
economy
-- provide some information, get some
money).
And this all seems to have started because some 19-year-olds were doing something -- drinking beer -- that was perfectly legal 27 years ago when I was 19.
Some might see this as progress, but I hope the rest of
the state takes its sweet time in becoming as
progressive
as Boulder.
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