I don’t want to get shot. I don’t want my friends to get shot.
Duh.
You would think that these would be the opinions of most college students (except during finals week). As of Thursday, however, I think I might have been in the minority. As a companion and I were finishing dinner at the Glenwood, a massive police operation began at the adjacent convenience store. Most ominous were the police officers — guns drawn — crouched behind cars.
According to Sgt. Rick Gilliam of the Eugene Police Department, what I witnessed was a “high-risk car stop,” in which officers stay behind cover and try to talk the suspect out. The suspect had allegedly stabbed someone in a knife fight earlier in the evening. The EPD had information that the suspect had a handgun, and yes, a gun was found in the vehicle.
But the crowd of students that gathered in a large semi-circle across the street from the situation must have more general confidence in the aim of suspects than I do. Undoubtedly these people could see more from their viewpoints. But as a result of their position, the suspect could have taken out some onlookers if he had felt the need to shoot at the police.
I can understand why college-aged people generally take risks less seriously than perhaps they should. Many of us don’t have dependents, aside from roommates. And because we have only lived relatively few years, we’re less likely to have been personally touched by a “freak accident” (so we can’t learn from other people’s mistakes). For many of us, if we die, aside from the emotional loss to loved ones and the loss of young potential to society, we don’t strand anyone.
But how much sense does it make to risk your life and health to watch a possible shootout? Maybe the crowd figured that if there were any real danger, the police would have cleared the area. Not according to Gilliam. The degree to which police concern themselves with onlookers depends largely on how many officers can respond.
“People stop and look, and they don’t realize the danger. The police can only control so much of the onlookers’ behavior,” Gilliam said. He recommends taking cover or avoiding the area entirely.
What’s scary is that some people never grow out of believing they are immortal. Do you notice parents who choose to subject their children to secondhand smoke, both pre- and post-natally, in spite of the known risks? Or, have you ever been passed by a vacation-loaded mini-van that flys by at a speed your car couldn’t reach if you dropped it out of an airplane?
I am pretty sure that you can’t say categorically that those parents love their children less. Instead, they are simply lacking in general regard for their own safety, something that they just never grew out of. Students can choose to involve themselves in many perilous activities in college. When we survive them all, we can develop a real Superman complex.
At the root of such an attitude is the balance of costs and benefits. The problem is that our priorities start out screwed-up and only get worse. What exactly were the gawkers, in the situation I observed Thursday, expecting to see? Imagine that the police, for whatever reason, decided to shoot the suspect(s). Do people really want to see that? Though I’m not completely immune to it, that kind of morbid curiosity is disturbing.
Never mind the laws, police officers, safety commissions and safety devices. Ultimately, the control a person has over her or his own safety dwarfs all that.
If we could stop and really weigh the costs and benefits of every decision, we would see upon reflection that our immediate desire is not even what we personally think is the smart thing to do. Getting our instincts in line with our more intellectual decisions will save lives.
I say, be selfish. Save your own life.