When Alisa, my Czarina of Calendar and Cold Solicitations, pinged me to tell me she had received an email from the President of the FBI National Academy Associates of North Carolina, inviting me to be the keynote speaker for their summer conference, she wrote, "I don't think this is real."
That's a fair assessment. On the surface, I am an unlikely candidate for such an engagement.
Instead of simply replying to the email – scammy things do come in from time to time – I did an internet search for the email's alleged author, Jacqui Boykin. I learned that, along with being the president of the North Carolina chapter of the FBI National Academy Associates (FBINAA), Ms. Boykin is the Chief of Police of Woodfin, NC, just north of Asheville.
I was struck by Chief Boykin's welcome letter on the City of Woodfin's website. She wrote, "I contend that policing is half community engagement and half law enforcement. The more we do on the front end, the less we have to do on the back." She went on to quote Sir Robert Peel (the "father of modern policing" who established the London Police Force at Scotland Yard in 1829): "The police are the public, and the public are the police; the police simply being members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to the duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police in action dealing with them.”
Well, lookee there! I, myself, am a citizen who cares about community welfare and existence.
Yep, Chief Boykin's initial email was legit. I had come to her attention when I had recently performed my one-man show, Free the Imprisoned Lightning, in Weaverville, NC, close to Woodfin. She and I had a lively FaceTime call during which she schooled me in the whys and wherefores of the FBI National Academy. Established in 1935, it is an elite ten-week training program at Marine Corps Base Quantico for leaders in law enforcement, focusing on academics, physical fitness, and networking & support. The “Associates” are law enforcement leaders who have been through the program.
Chief Boykin and I talked about the kind of things she wanted in a speech. She said that since she had moved to Woodfin, she was embracing the mountain culture, and storytelling seemed “Appalachia-esque.” (She is originally from Damascus, MD, and was astonished when I said, “You grew up going to ‘Jimmie-Cone!’” At first, she thought I was clairvoyant, but then I explained that I have patronized every non-chain soft-serve ice cream joint in these United States.) Last year, the FBINAA conference's keynote speaker was a high-ranking North Carolina government official. She gently hinted that I might be a bit more fun. Then, she earnestly said, “We need to laugh!” I told her that I understood and I take humor seriously. As a dear friend of mine would say, Chief Boykin and I “clickety-clacked.”
So, what did I speak about?
Well, my personal knowledge of real crime is pretty limited. On the victim end of things, I’ve been pretty lucky – a not-so-memorable incident of a broken window on my car in Florida, and a stolen bike back in college. On the perp side, well, it isn’t because I’m a good guy or anything; I’m just risk-averse.
But I have put a lot of thought into the complexities of our society and our society’s attitude toward the police.
I told a story called “Spinners,” which features Marguerite Van Camp, my fictional aunt, an octogenarian and a recent medical school graduate. One of the scenes in that story goes like this:
• • •
Marguerite was driving one fine day in early June on Highway 41 in her 1968 Plymouth Fury II when she spied a field of green leafy rows with red dots at the bottom. She whisper-exclaimed to herself, “Strawberries!” Between the field and the highway was a ramshackle shack with a notice sloppily spray-painted thereupon, “PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES!”
Nobody was around, but Marguerite thought that whoever owned the place couldn’t be too far away. She pulled her car off the highway, where her wheels dropped three or so inches into the eroded, dusty dirt. She got out of her car and opened the trunk where she kept her reusable grocery bags and a floppy sun hat. She happily walked to the field and began to pick, confident that a worker from the farm would return, a person with whom she could properly transact for her freshly gathered fruit.
An old Ford truck came speeding through the field. An old man got out, slammed the door, and yelled, “What are you doin’?!
Marguerite answered, “I’m picking strawberries.”
“Didn’t you see the sign?!”
“Yes. It says, ‘Pick your own strawberries.’”
“That's right! Pick your OWN damn strawberries! These are MINE!”
The scary mean old man* took out his cellphone and seemed to be calling somebody.
(*A scary mean old man is a scary mean old man, no matter how old you are.)
Marguerite had never stolen anything in her eighty-five years, but she couldn’t just return the strawberries. So she made as much haste as her old legs could muster, flopped into her car, started it up, and for the first time in her life, put the pedal to the metal. Her rear wheels threw dirt, and the tires barked when they bumped up onto the pavement. For miles, she listened for the sirens that never came.
Marguerite told of this incident to her best friend Mary Frances, who retorted, “You know, when law-abiding people think of the police, it’s always in terms of driving. You know, 'Keep an eye out for the fuzz!'”
Marguerite said, “I reckon that if law-abiding people are keeping an eye out for the law, they aren’t all that law-abiding.”
Mary Frances said, “Uh-huh. Even th’Google Maps on the phone, suction-cupped up there on the windshield, blats out, ‘POLICE DETECTED AHEAD.” In minivans throughout this great land of ours, Mamas and Daddys heed that warning, and the kids strapped in their car seats are listening, learning to have a confrontational relationship with the police.”
• • •
When the evening with the FBINAA was coming to a close, last year’s President, Brent Phelps, Chief of the Lenior, NC Police Department, was eager to bend my ear. He told me that when he was a Lieutenant overseeing his department's investigations division, he was finishing up his Bachelor's degree at Lees-McRae College. He needed one more elective credit, so he took a storytelling class. During that period, he and other officers responded to a call to a house riddled with drugs and abuse – a particularly horrible situation. Inside were four children.
When Chief Phelps recalled this to me, he was emphatic, "Children get put in situations because of parents' life choices. It’s not the child’s fault, and most of the time, they don’t realize there is a different way of life until they grow older."
In that house, the then-Lieutenant Phelps gathered the children into a room away from the adults and began to tell stories. He told me, "I remember the children’s faces when I started with, 'A long, long time ago, back when animals could talk….'”
After arrests were made and everything had been taken care of, the other officers waited in the doorway for Lieutenant Phelps to finish his final story. He was amused and delighted to discover these police officers were listening with the same intensity as the children.
Andy Offutt Irwin is a storyteller, humorist, and singer/songwriter from Covington, GA. Ping him at andy@andyirwin.com.
