Standing in San Marcos’ crowded city hall lobby this past September, I watched the faces of the city’s leaders. Dozens of residents—business owners, college students, city staff, families of police officers—had come to speak for or against a proposed cite-and-release ordinance. Months later, we are still waiting to hear a decision from the city council. The ordinance, if it is approved, will allow police officers to write citations for low-level, nonviolent Class A and B misdemeanors versus arresting people and taking them into custody. At that September meeting, the council members’ expressions ranged from mildly annoyed to focused and attentive. Some occasionally glanced up from their piles of papers to look a speaker in the eye. Others kept checking the clock.
As I watched the council, I imagined what it must be like for them, sitting between the people and the police, trying to decide whose concerns were more pressing.
I had always assumed the people’s needs and concerns came first—and not the people with the badges and the guns—but I’ve learned that this is often not the case. It’s upsetting. Then I remind myself that the city council members are just people too. People with fancy titles and more inherent powers, protections, and influence than 90 percent of the local population—but people, nonetheless. People who can be subject to their own underlying faults and misgivings. People who could have made some of the same banal mistakes that this city’s police department aggressively arrests for every day, like driving without a license or carrying less than four ounces of marijuana. I remind myself that these people have their own families, personal difficulties, and bills to pay.
