{"id":33,"date":"2011-09-14T14:26:13","date_gmt":"2011-09-14T21:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arroya.org\/?p=33"},"modified":"2011-10-09T00:28:26","modified_gmt":"2011-10-09T07:28:26","slug":"good-cop-bad-cop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/?p=33","title":{"rendered":"Good Cop, Bad Cop"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK, I’ll admit it.\u00a0 I read the headlines of the Arizona Daily Star, and hear about the violence and lawlessness in Mexico, and it gives me pause.\u00a0 Nogales has had its share of shoot-outs and drug-related violence.\u00a0 But hey, Tucson isn’t exactly immune to insane violent outbursts.\u00a0 Jan. 8, 2011 is forever seared in my brain as the Safeway massacre.\u00a0 Gabrielle Giffords, my heroine, shot down shaking hands with her constituents, was practicing the most\u00a0sacred of democratic principles.\u00a0 She was talking to the people.\u00a0 She was looking the people in the eye.\u00a0 So I keep my head up and pay attention to what’s going on when I hike that mile across the border to the comedor.\u00a0 I remember Gabby.<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, our group parked on the US side in a mini-market parking lot for the usual potty break.\u00a0 There were about 5 Border Patrol guys hanging out in the parking lot.\u00a0 They looked at us, I looked at them.\u00a0 My little group had our Samaritan t-shirts on, so it was no secret what we were up to.\u00a0 But, seeing five Border Patrol guys in one spot is pretty unusual.\u00a0 So I figure my taxes are paying for these guys.\u00a0 Don’t be intimidated.\u00a0 I walk over asking if there is any “trouble on the other side of the border?”\u00a0\u00a0 They laugh and say, “no, we’re just slackers taking too long a break.” One guy grins and says, “if there was trouble, we’d be the last to know…”<\/p>\n

They want to chat it up a bit with me.<\/p>\n

Then one guy asks—“Are you the folks who leave water in the desert for the lost illegals?”\u00a0 I take a deep breath expecting some sort of verbal confrontation, and say, “Yep, that’s us.”\u00a0\u00a0 And I add, “Since the Wallow Fire, we were ordered out of the National Forests because of the fire danger, so we haven’t been able to do our water drops.”<\/p>\n

And here’s the kicker—the Border Patrol guy says, “We really miss you—we’ve been pulling people out of the desert right and left.\u00a0 We appreciate your help with saving people lost out there.\u00a0 No one can survive these temperatures.”<\/p>\n

Wow—I was stunned.\u00a0 We are actually on the same side.\u00a0 So I screw up my courage and say:\u00a0 “We appreciate what you do too….as long as you catch the bad guys and not the good guys.”<\/p>\n

One guy smiles and says, “Well, we do the best we can.”<\/p>\n

And I can’t ask for more than that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Lean on me<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, I’ll admit it.\u00a0 I read the headlines of the Arizona Daily Star, and hear about the violence and lawlessness in Mexico, and it gives me pause.\u00a0 Nogales has had its share of shoot-outs and drug-related violence.\u00a0 But hey, Tucson isn’t exactly immune to insane violent outbursts.\u00a0 Jan. 8, 2011 is forever seared in my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127,"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.arroya.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}