FLASHBACK: Revisiting a Discussion from May 10 2007.
A couple of years ago I had the privilege about having some detailed conversations with Patrol Officer Todd Orr and Sgt. Robb Butterfield of the Chubbuck Police department.
My family has now lived in this area close to five years. I know a lot more about this state and its culture then I did that winter. So I recently took some time to reflect back, research, and learn more about what I had heard from the Chubbuck Police. I wrote an open letter to Chubbuck Mayor Steve England, found in this blog entry:
England has been silent on the matter, as was Chubbuck Police Chief Randy Severe, when I emailed him to see if the chief wanted to journey into these waters.
Interestingly, the officers in question were both extremely outspoken.
It was a couple of winter’s ago when Butterfield communicated that Chubbuck was having a lot of problems with break-ins, as well as problems with thefts from construction sites.
I had been out late one night walking in the Pine Ridge Mall lot, and had my first encounter with these two officers from that situation. There had just been a break-in at Sears, I later learned.
After asking Butterfield his position on racial profiling, he said that police stop everyone walking around after midnight in Chubbuck.
Has anyone else seen this to be the case?
After I mentioned that Orr seemed a bit angry and overbearing, Butterfield said that he had trained Orr, and agreed that Orr could be a bit fiesty. He also said that they had just come from the break-in, which may have accounted for some of Orr’s response to me.
Butterfield said that they regularly received all kinds of calls and performed busts, including drug busts, at the apartment complex my family lived in at the time: Pine Ridge Apartments. I had brought this topic up to him because we had noticed police cars there often. So I asked why.
During my meeting with Butterfield the night after they stopped me, I informed him that I was a local journalist and that I would be writing about these matters. He even gave me a couple of police magazines (after I asked for them) on my way out of the station.
A minute before I left his office, I thought the matter of my stop in the mall lot was behind us, so I switched to a friendlier tone of conversation.
Then, completely unsolicted, Butterfield told me, ” .. for example, if we smell marijuana (on you next time) we might take a different direction.”
Other bloggers and residents I spoke to about this attributed Butterfield’s attitude to the pessimism that police often feel, due to the numerous low-lifes they often deal with.
“Cops are always on the defensive,” Butterfield said.
Other residents thought that his out-of-the-blue comment was just another sign of Chubbuck’s elitist attitude.
It will be interesting to interview Orr and Butterfield again, looking back more than two years, to see where they stand today on these issues.
— Michael
See the original post at http://www.pocatelloshops.com/new_blogs/community/?p=2859 and see this archive at the Wayback Machine.
