This story from Saturday's Washington Post is an odd one. On the surface it reads like a story about street crime and what the police does to catch the culprits. But on a deeper level it's a very odd view of violence:
Alone, the woman strides with her head down through an isolated park near Adams Morgan, seemingly unaware of her status as potential prey.
District vice officers Tommy Ellingsworth and Christopher Dove immediately classify the slight woman in her twenties as a "straggler," or victim in waiting, as she wanders along the path a few blocks from the bustle of one of the city's nightlife pulse points.
"Hey, Miss, a little helpful information -- there has been a lot of robberies here," Ellingsworth yells out of his driver's-side window to the spooked woman in jeans.
With a wave and a "thanks," the woman proceeds through Pierce Park in Northwest Washington, a common but dangerous shortcut.
"They don't help us out any, do they?" Ellingsworth asks his partner, speculating on how helpless the woman and others like her would be if an attacker jumped out from the bushes.
"They're done," Dove said, imagining them as victims on a robbery report.
Deployed in a constant struggle between cops and robbers around the city's center, the two officers in the street-crimes unit view muggings as a survival contest. The way they see it, the stickup men and juveniles patrol the streets like hyenas in search of their next meal: those who wander from the crowd, only to find themselves vulnerable and ultimately victimized.
...
A man pedals his bike behind another man walking alone through an alley. A lone woman steps deep into a neighborhood of rowhouses, with her head down, unaware of the two men in the next block, or even that two other men -- Ellingsworth and Dove -- are watching her from their car.
"She had no clue," Ellingsworth says. "She didn't even look this way."
Odd, I said, because I sense a fatalistic acceptance in these police officers, and perhaps even a greater identification with the predators than what they view as the prey. Yet I can also see their point, because of my own experiences in being attacked and the years I have since spent amassing fighting skills. I firmly believe that every single young person should be taught the basic survival and vigilance skills that might come useful one lonely and dark night. Or in your own living room, in the bright light of the day. This is something schools should provide, just as they provide education in driving.
But the public safety shouldn't be totally on the shoulders of the individuals. We pay the police for a reason, and that reason is not that they can tut-tut over the ignorance of women who look just like prey animals to them.
I had to write this far until I finally realized what bothered me so much about the hidden storyline. The major message is for women to be Very Afraid, and this message is not connected to any good advice about what to do without just sitting at home every night.