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Living and Thriving in the USA By Dave Francis OK, we last examined the school system in the USA, and so this month, I am going to get more specific into some of the cultural differences that exist between our two countries. To catch you up to date, we are using St. Louis, Missouri as our example city. It is a city in the middle of the USA, on the Mississippi river, just south of Chicago Illinois. It has a population of 2.5 million people, mainly whites, blacks, and a growing number of Hispanics. There are also a lot of Bosnians there, refugees from the problems in southern Europe. One of the situations I can imagine causing a severe problem for a Russian newly arrived in the USA is dealing with the police. It is a lot different there than here. The difference can be devastating if someone finds himself in a bad situation. First of all, always remember, the USA is a land of laws, and a land of lawyers. We have a respect for the law that is very serious. The most frequent contact any of us normal citizens has with the legal system is the police officer. In the US, they are everywhere. If you drive a car, you will almost certainly have a chance to meet one. Imagine driving down the road, and being pulled over by the police. The officer comes to the window, asks to see your driver’s license, and begins to write you a ticket for an infraction. It might be speeding, running a stop light, not wearing a seat belt, changing lanes without signaling, or any number of things. The crime doesn’t matter. In the US, an officer gives you a ticket as a way of accusing you of a crime. In a technical sense, it is an arrest. Usually, you don’t go into custody, you just sign the back of the ticket as a promise to appear in court on the specified day. So the officer writes the ticket, hands it to you to sign, and what do you do? In Russia, you slip the cop 100 roubles and you drive off. In America, if you try to give the cop any money, he will take you from your car, handcuff your hands behind your back, call a tow truck to take your car to the impound lot, and take you to jail, where you will be charged with a felony, with a possible prison sentence of up to 10 years or so. It is realistic to imagine that you could go to prison for a short time for this crime. It is unrealistic to imagine that the officer would take the money. I cannot stress this enough. Never, ever, ever, offer a police officer anything to convince him to not write you a ticket, or perform what he sees as his duty as an officer. I promise you, nothing good will come of it. I have lived, off and on, in the USA for more than 40 years, have a large family, a lot of friends, and I don’t know anyone who has ever even attempted to bribe a cop. It is simply not done. Now, I know in Russia it is common. I used to live in Mexico, and I have traveled to a lot of countries where it is the norm, but not in America. I will tell you a quick story to try to show you how serious a crime it is. There was a young man named Janikowski who was a wonderful football player in high school in Poland. He was such a good player that the American universities wanted him to come play American football, as a field goal kicker. He came to America, played college football, got a degree, and was on his way to a wonderful life. You see, in America, if you are a star college football player, you may be destined for great wealth. After graduation, the NFL (National Football League) has a draft of college players who are leaving school, and the first several dozen players chosen all become multi-millionaires. The teams choosing them pay huge salaries to get them to play for their team. Janikowski was one of the first players chosen. The Oakland Raiders had chosen him to be their first choice of the draft, and the owner of the Raiders is known as a man who will spare no expense on his football team. Young Janikowski was apparently going to be paid several million dollars in a few weeks. Then a problem came up. It seemed that a few weeks before the draft, Janikowski had been at a local club with some friends and a fight occurred. Janikowski was not involved in the fight, but a friend was. At any rate, it was a minor affair, with no injuries to anyone involved. The police were called however, and outside the bar, while things were being sorted out, Janikowski tried to help his friend. He offered the police officer some money to let his friend go, and forget the whole incident. Janikowski was immediately arrested. Handcuffed. Taken to jail. Being a local celebrity (In college towns, the football players are treated like royalty.) would usually keep you out of trouble, but in the case of bribing a police officer, it was no help. The police took it as an insult to their professionalism, so they had no mercy. Luckily for Janikowski, when he went to court, it was in the area of the university, (The judge was an alumni and a football fan.) and he had a team of high-powered lawyers financed by the Oakland Raiders. He was acquitted of the charge, and avoided a five-year prison sentence, after which he would have been deported back to Poland, and never allowed back in the USA. All this because he was behaving as any normal, red-blooded Pole, or Russian for that matter, would in a similar circumstance. That is an example of how serious it is. If you would attempt the same thing, you may not have celebrity and pre-paid legal teams at your disposal, so you may end up in jail, then on a one-way flight back to Russia. Don’t do it. Pay the lawyers. That is how the system works there. Any time you encounter a police officer, the thing to do is to be polite, respectful, and follow orders. Police in the USA can sometimes be jittery, sometimes abusive, and sometimes mean spirited. One thing you can count on. You will not win an argument with a police officer. Ultimately, he has the right to take you to jail and charge you with a crime. When your court day comes, you may be proven innocent, but there will be no apology forthcoming from the police officer that mistakenly arrested you. All the inconvenience and expense you incurred will be for nothing. If the police officer gives you a ticket, listen carefully to the instructions about court, sign the ticket, and go on with your day. The time to dispute the charge is in court, with an attorney at your side, not on the side of the road with a cop who may or may not be having a bad day. Most police officers in the USA are efficient, professional, and businesslike. For some reason, I seem to have a knack for meeting the others. Some of them are rude, abusive, and get a kick out of the power they wield over the citizens. In either case, the best thing to do is to follow their instructions and save any comments for the courtroom. If, God forbid, you should find yourself in some sort of more serious situation, remember this. The police officers job is to convict people for committing crimes. If he can find the criminal who committed the crime, that is wonderful, but if not, he will be happy with anyone convenient. There are a lot of people in jail in the USA who did not commit the crime they were charged with. Any time a police officer approaches you with the idea that you may be involved in a crime; he has the legal responsibility to ‘read you your rights.’ What this means is he is supposed to tell you that you have the right to not answer any questions, that you have the right to an attorney, and that your attorney can be with you at any time you are questioned. He is also supposed to inform you that if you cannot afford an attorney, the government will appoint one to act in your behalf. He should also tell you that if you abandon these rights, and answer his questions, anything you say might be used against you in court. This is a very serious time. If an officer tells you this, stop talking. It can do you no good. If you are innocent, the lawyers will work it out. If you are guilty… well, we will leave that for another column. Seriously though, in the USA, we take the rights we have as citizens very seriously, and you should too as an immigrant. Do not allow yourself to be intimidated, cajoled, or convinced to abandon those rights. The system is set up to be fair, but that fairness to you is dependent upon you exercising your rights. Especially since the September 11th attack on the United States, our government and our citizens have been becoming more and more anti-immigrant. Next month, we will discuss that, and what it means to you, the Russian immigrant. You may be surprised. Dave Francis |