Doing Paperwork

Posted on | November 30, 2009 |

I read with sadness about the four police officers who were murdered while drinking coffee in their morning coffee shop, yesterday.

Yet, obsessed with words as I am, I could not help noticing that several reports said the officers were sitting ‘doing paperwork on their laptops’. Um, does anyone else feel this is odd? Paper is paper, and laptops are laptops.  One can do administrative tasks on a laptop, but until it’s printed out it’s not ‘paperwork’.

The reporter’s odd language choice led to the next question: if these officers were doing their administrative work for their jobs, then why were they doing confidential police work (for anything to do with law enforcement must be confidential to some degree) in a public place? Why don’t these officers have a desk and a proper place to work? Or perhaps they do, but they are overworked and can’t get to them? Or were they attempting to multitask?

You see, the more one prods at the cliche of ‘doing paperwork’ the weirder the situation becomes.  What were those officers doing? Internet surfing? Well, the report says they were doing ‘paperwork’ which suggests pretty clearly that they were at work doing work-related things, as so many other people do, in a coffee shop. Behind this disturbing event is a story of police officers who seem to have made it a collegial habit to gather at this coffee shop and do computer-based work. It was a habit that was sufficiently ingrained that the murderer was able to target them.

I have only sadness for the event, and deep compassion for those who have died and for their suffering relatives.  My task here is not about anything except to point out that behind every story, lurking behind every cliche, is another story.  That story can humanize events. These police officers were at work, supporting each other, doing their best to get everything done in what is surely a massively busy schedule. Perhaps the story behind the ’story’ is that these officers were over-worked, and had been for a while? Is that why they had to work this way? At a time of tax shortfalls and budget cuts this should not surprise us.

But I wonder if anyone else is bothering to ask such questions?

A dramatic man-hunt is now underway, and a house has been staked out.  That makes for exciting press releases.  But perhaps the question of police working conditions will be overlooked as a result, and that would be a pity. While we read about pursuit and punishment, the very people who deserve our consideration - the dead officers - seem to have faded from the public eye. They will be the ‘victims’, and the tv footage will focus on the funerals, the grief, the loss.

Perhaps we could also think about what could have made their lives easier….

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