Miss Biggert Lays Down the Law Part I

My 4th grade teacher was Miss Biggert. Just as Mrs. Rowe focused on the multiplication tables, so Miss Biggert was big on history. "My students know their American history", she boasted to my mom, and, by and large, it was no idle boast.

My parets bought me a series of "Landmark" books about American history to help me in her class. I actually read and reported on the ones on Paul Revere and Lewis and Clark, but I told everyone that I had read three (and I think I actually did a short report on the third one). It was the one on the Making of the Constitution, but it was so difficult that I counted it as having read the whole thing after I read the first two chapters.

Besides history, Miss Biggert liked to talk about law and politics. Like everyone else in Pocatello, she was a Democrat and was very proud of the fact. But looking back on her attitudes I think she was, partially due to her age, a Grover Cleveland type Democrat, which, as everyone knows, is a far cry from a Nancy Pelosi Democrat. I mention this because her formal lecture I remember best was her lecture on the law. She started the lecture by inviting Officer Anderson (I think that was his name), to do his presentation. Officer Anderson was far and away the most popular policeman in Pocatello, probably in the whole state of Idaho. He loved to speak to grade schools, and grade school kids, including myself, loved to hear his presentation--which I did at least twice, maybe three times in the course of my early school years. He was a ventriloquist whose "dummy" was an invisible character named "Sparkie". Sparkie would speak out of closets, the teacher's desk, and anywhere else in a classroom that was big enough to hide a little kid. And I must say, it sure sounded to me like Sparkie's voice was acutally coming from the closet, desk, etc.

Officer Anderson always began his presentation by asking Sparkie if he has hiding because he was afraid of a policeman, to which Sparkie replied indignantly that no law abiding citizen ever need be afraid of a policeman. Why was he hiding then? Sparkie responded that he was hiding because he was afraid of us (the kids) because we looked pretty tough. This, naturally, caused a good deal of laughter. There followed a good deal of banter as Sparkie jumped from one location in the room to another. The gist of Sparkie's dialogue was (1)America is a land ruled by laws and not rulers, (2) those we think of as rulers of sorts like the president and the police are really servants, (3)the police have no power that an ordinary citizen does not have--if they did, America would be a police state like Germany or Italy in the recent war, and (4)--and he stressed this at some length--an ordinary citizen can arrest someone if they know he is or has committed a crime--this was called a citizen's arrest.

When he asked if there were any questions, Randy Harris, who was a bit of a talker, (and sometimes more than a bit) asked, "You mean if I went into a store where there was a hold-up, that I could arrest the guys?"

Officer Anderson got so excited that he started to answer himself, but Sparkie interrupted him, and said simply that, while it was true that an ordinary citizen could make an arrest, he should leave the tough criminals, who might very well be armed with guns and knives, to the police who, Sparkie was careful to point out, had no special rights, but did have special training in handling mean criminals. We should only arrest criminals when we were sure we could handle them without danger and were sure that they didn't have any guns or knives. For the next several days most of us guys were on the lookout for first and second graders--guys we were pretty sure we could handle--who were stealing marbles or yo-yos or such like, so we could arrest them.

Of course, the Supreme Court, because they never had a chance to hear from Sparkie, have long since wiped all that stuff out. They made it the law that whenever you arrest someone you have to explain to them all about Miranda's rights. I doubt that one American in a thousand, probably not one in a million, even knows who Miranda is, much less what her rights are and why you should have to explain all about them before you can arrest someone for stealing marbles. But, of course, the worst part is, that if you do arrest them and you forget (or never knew) about Miranda and her rights, then instead of the marble-stealer, you go to jail for making an improper arrest. But, sadly, it gets even worse, as we shall see when we get the rest of Miss Biggert's lecture on law.