The Thin Red Line

Some days, I love my job. One of the really nice things about working at the library is that you work for librarians. Over the years, in other jobs I’ve inevitably asked about some aspect of the work that interested me, although beyond the scope of my own limited duties only to be told to ‘get back to the work we pay you for; that’s none of your concern.’

Putting books back on the shelves all day every day you get to know the Dewey Decimal System quite well. I can tell you off the top of my head that cookbooks can be found at 641 (a huge number at our library with an extraordinary number of decimal subsections that goes on for about 18 feet), Gardening at 635, Pets and Domesicated Animals at 636, Computers, Software and the Internet at 004, 005 and 006 and travel guides in the 910’s. Also that Bibles are at 220. I had noticed some time ago that Bibles were at 220 but it was only today that I realized that the number 220 denotes only the Judeo-Christian Bible. So I asked the head reference librarian where the sacred texts of other faiths can be found.

Keith reacted as though I’d handed him a present. He explained that 200’s–289 are all devoted to varying aspects of Judeo-Christianity and that everything about other religions can be found in the 290’s, which he led me to and showed me where the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita are shelved and agreed with my observation that this very uneven treatment of religious subjects seemed to reflect Dewey’s own prejudices. Ten minutes later Keith went back to the reference desk and I pushed my empty cart back to the work room, thinking ‘I love this job’.

All of which is in preface to introducing today’s books which stress the unusual part of the ‘interesting, unusual and noteworthy’ in my tagline. The 000’s are easily the weirdest and freakiest of the 10 Dewey ranges. Officially noted as "Generalities" this range includes everything from UFO’s, the Loch Ness Monster and alien abduction survivors, to computers, software and Internet, the Guinness Book of World Records, professional resources for librarians and a grab bag of other oddities that Melvil Dewey couldn’t fit in anywhere else. The Alien Abduction Survivors Guide is, believe it or not, an earnest support manual for abductees. The author, who claims to have been abducted by aliens numerous time and to be a spokesperson for those aliens, offers specific advice for dealing with various emotions, including ridicule. Recommended for amusement value only.

Black Belt Librarians is a no-nonsense handbook for implementing rules on library use that insure all patrons will be able to use library services in a safe and comfortable environment. Which is a very PC way of stating it is a manual for library administrators in districts where large numbers of homeless patrons use the library as a place of shelter and refuge, a purpose for which libraries were never intended. It served primarily to make me thankful that we have relatively little of those types of problems at my library. Recommended only to library administrators who have a significant homeless patron issue to address.

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This post should make you afraid. Very afraid. Although if you are middle-aged or elderly AND white AND rich AND do not have children, you might be able to safely ignore it. Dale C. Carson is a former Miami police officer, former FBI agent and currently a criminal defense attorney. In Arrest-Proof Yourself he paints a very frightening picture of the current state of the criminal justice system, although not for the sorts of reasons you might expect.

According to Carson, violent and serious crime is down substantially due to mandatory sentencing laws such as ‘three strikes’ and police now actively enforce many laws that at one time would have been over-looked. Further he states that since the implementation of federalized criminal records databases the fact of an arrest, for anything, even if the charges are subsequently dismissed or you are acquitted of any wrong doing will follow you for life, no matter where you go. Where in an earlier era it would have been possible to get a clean start by moving away from the location where your criminal record remained on paper in a filing cabinet, you may find your career and other life opportunities severely restricted by the on-line arrest record that many employers will be able to view.

Carson goes on to state that while the police do a good job of catching serious criminals, they spend the vast bulk of their time enforcing misdemeanor laws, most often arresting poor and minority miscreants who pose no threat to the society and who’s minor mis-deeds would be more appropriately and economically handled as civil matters. He argues that this constant churning of the poor through the criminal justice system, which is largely paid for by the families of those arrested in the form of bail, attorney’s fees, fines and probation fees is the major reason for the persistence of poverty.

The bulk of the book is devoted to very specific advise on how to avoid contact with the police and what to say, do and not do if you do have contact with the police in order to minimize your chances of be arrested. Much of the advise is common sense and seemed both reasonable and obvious to me– drive the speed limit, don’t carry drugs, dress appropriately; if contacted by the police provide your name and offer your ID and then SHUT UP. Do not consent to a search of your vehicle.

Other parts of the advice seemed absurd but may in fact be appropriate: if you have a teenager who drives, Carson advises you to remove the back seat of the car, have the trunk lid welded shut and fill the glove compartment, cup holders, map holders and any other nooks and crannies in which drugs or other contraband might be hidden with a hardening foam and placing in the car a signed affidavit stating that you have altered the car in this way to insure that no drugs or contraband may be hidden in it and authorizing police to search the car, remove the foam and pop the trunk should they suspect that drugs or other contraband are hidden in the car. This struck me as way over the top, but honesty I don’t know. Fearfully Recommended.

In sharp contrast to the current day manual for surviving the criminal justice system that reads like a dystopian fantasy, today’s other book selection paints a very different picture of police work from an earlier era. Published in 1956, Cop Hater is the first of the 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain (a pseudonym for Evan Hunter). This series revolves around the police detectives in a particular precinct in an un-named fictitious city which is evocative of New York. The series hook is that the precinct itself is the central character with different officers taking the lead roles in each volume and stepping into the background but still visible in other installments. The wildly successful series is up to 50 books at this writing with additional volumes forthcoming.

A fairly standard mystery in the standard police procedural format, the principle appeal of the book to me was the 1950’s milieu and the older, less technological workings of the investigations of genuine bad guys and the absence of the of the excessively bureaucratic harassment and abuse of harmless miscreants that figured so prominently in the Carson book. Recommended.

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And then it went fast.

Yesterday afternoon a not particularly humpy UPS guy (Ron quipped ‘I thought that was illegal’) dropped off a box from Earthlink. David came over after work and he and Ron fiddled with things a bit and today we have broadband again, wireless networked to two computers. We are thrilled with the speed. David was very pleased he got it to work after not being able to get the laptop online on Linux a couple of weeks back. (The latest on that is that we will try re-installing XP and see if we can’t get the lappy onto our wireless as well.)

I previously read and blogged about Jed Horne’s Katrina Book Breach Of Faith and recently happened upon this 2005 title detailing the story of Curtis Kyls who was arrested for the 1984 murder of Dolores Dye in a supermarket parking lot. The cover blurbs compare it to In Cold Blood and Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, and it does read like a novel, a real page turner. Kyls, who insisted all along that he had nothing whatever to do with Dye’s murder, spent 14 years incarcerated at Orleans Parish Prison and the Angola Penitentiary as his case wound through 5 trials, 4 hung juries, one conviction and an appeal that went all the way to the US Supreme Court, making it one of the most litigated murder cases in history. He was ultimately released in 1998 when Orleans district attorney Harry Connick declined to begin work on a sixth trial.

Regardless of whether you believe Kyls did or did not kill Dye, the case represents a serious mis-carriage of justice, which Horne amply demonstrates was emblematic of the troubled criminal justice system in Louisiana in the 80’s and 90’s. (Horne himself flatly states that he does not know whether or not Kyls is guilty of the crime and leaves it for the reader to determine.) I remember when I read and blogged about Bayou Farewell, remarking how despite having grown up in New Orleans just 75 miles or so away the Cajun coast was a world I had known very little of and with this book I was again struck by what a different and foreign world the people in this book inhabited, just a very few miles from where I grew up. Recommended.

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