EUGENE, Ore. (BN) — Sidney Moist was returning home with his friends in the West Eugene neighborhood on a Friday evening in April, only a few blocks from the “Beermuda” Triangle, when they approached a dark intersection and noticed the unlit police vehicles. As they neared, three officers were seen handcuffing an obstreperous homeless man, holding him face down in the street. Moist took umbrage to this, and decided to step in and say something.
What happened next is disputed.
“They kicked the ever-loving sh— out of me,” Moist told Brimborion News. “I was unconscious by the fourth or fifth stomp. I woke up hours later in a cell. They told me I was going away for life, that I’d never see my girlfriend or cats again.”
Three days later, Sidney emerged from the Lane County jail, bleary-eyed and not quite certain what had transpired. He had been booked on assaulting an officer and resisting arrest, but had been released without charge. His friends had feared the worst, and were frankly amazed he was still alive.
“They looked like they saw a ghost when I showed up for work on Monday. They seriously thought I was dead. I realize now I never should have said anything, but it looked like [the police] were hurting that dude, and I was too drunk to operate a cellphone. So were my friends, apparently. Which is unfortunate.”
When asked if he remembered assaulting any of the officers, Moist replied, “Man, I didn’t touch them. The cop scraped his knuckles on the pavement trying to give me a double axe-handle blow. Assault, right there. And by the time they cuffed me and dragged me to the car, I was too comatose not to resist, you know? I was basically six sacks of rainbow quinoa sewn together.”
An analysis into the hiring of officers over the last ten years shows a disturbing trend—older offices retiring, younger ones leaving the force, and new ones coming in from larger metropolitan areas, a significant number of them with blemished records.
“It’s something we’re seeing in departments all over the country, and Eugene is no exception,” said Jarvis Oglethorpe, professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Oregon. “An officer is fired for reckless or criminal behavior, or quits in the wake of an investigation, and they wind up in another, smaller municipality, whose department is desperate for seasoned veterans.”
The EPD did not respond to a request for comment before the filing of this story.
“I see cops all the time cruising by junkies and hookers they know are out selling, copping, turning tricks. They know what goes on, and where,” said resident Bill McSloshed, “but they don’t do nothing about it. But if you’re a rich kid down on campus who gets his stereo or PS5 stolen, they’ll be at your door in five minutes.”
“They get these tripwire clockers, pot thieves and skull-busters in here from L.A. and New York, and they aren’t using their bully rage to beat up people who actually commit crimes,” said an employee at the Lane County District Attorney’s office, who refused to give their name for fear of being reprimanded or losing their job. “Plus, at our end, we just don’t have the time or the space to put as many offenders away as people want us to. It’s all about the resources. Which, sometimes, we got dick of.”
“My friend down from Portland got pulled over the other day on suspicion of possession of paraphernalia,” Moist said, still with marks on his face from the arrest. “She sat there for, like, an hour while the cop searched her car, and right across the street she swears three dudes and some girl smoked meth in a tent and then had a gang bang. I guess you just can’t enrich yourself at the expense of a tweaker the way you can someone who drives a Subaru. Not in this town, anyway.”
