The secret game came to light Thursday, when Bozeman Police Chief Jim Veltkamp held a press conference to reveal details about the game. In his statement to the press, Veltkamp insisted the rights of those stopped by BPD were not violated as part of the game.Veltkamp said officers, “Were engaged in a bingo competition where success in the game hinged on whether they engaged in actions listed on the bingo card.”“It did look like your standard bingo card,” added Veltkamp. “They filled in squares of things they wanted to see happen or have happened in order to check off that box in the bingo card.”Other categories included “FOOT PURSUIT FOR ARRESTABLE OFFENSE” and “APPLY TQ OR CHEST SEAL,” referring to the use of a tourniquet or sealing wounds to a person’s torso to stop blood loss.“One of those was to do a search warrant on a car,” said Veltkamp. “Which in and of itself, that is part of their duties. The concern is if they manipulated anything in order to be able to search a car.”It took two and half months for the BPD, the Bozeman City Attorney's Office and the Gallatin County Attorney's Office to release information about the game.At the press conference held at the Bozeman Public Safety Center, Veltkamp said the game went on for 12 days until someone alerted command staff, who shut down the game.
I get the concern that improper searches or arrests might have been motivated by the desire to check off a bingo block. However, I have to say that the game sounds like it was probably just good fun. I could easily see a Firefighter or EMS version of this (especially since some of the things overlap -- "Apply Successful CPR" or "TQ" for example).
It would never be permitted, just as the police had to cancel this one as soon as leadership learned about it. The problem is that members of the public do not always share the dark sense of humor that tends to develop in public safety. The hardest I usually ever laugh is often on EMS Continuing Education training night, which our various EMTs and Paramedics have to take regularly and which is helpful for me even though I don't require it. You need a sense of humor to confront injury, sickness, and death on a regular basis. It's good for them to laugh. It helps them help others.
It does hurt people's feelings, though, so you have to keep it behind closed doors.
2 comments:
Firefighters EMT's etc are in a different universe than police.
Their work does not involve the potential to incarcerate or kill someone as a normal duty.
All the associations, uniforms and flashing lights in the world cannot alter this basic difference.
Making dark jokes about the grim realities of life and death are one thing, having a "game" where there is potential to "weight" the score is a whole other situation.
That's true, and it's an important moral line: it's the line between the state as coercive force, versus voluntarily requested assistance. I think that's the very line that I want to draw between what a state shouldn't do, and what it might legitimately do. Voluntarism is my position.
That's one reason I noted that several of the bingo squares were for things we share in common: applying CPR well, for example, is a good thing to encourage. Nobody's going to force someone to accept CPR against their will (nor could you be successful at applying it, since they'd have a beating heart already). One of them was 'put out a fire before BFD,' which would be a nice change in police behavior -- usually they're half an hour behind us, and do not attempt to stop fires.
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