Public Embarrassment & Privacy, Part 1

The Peoria Journal Star presents this story that will inspire mixed reactions. A naive farmer hits the big city, gets lost, asks for directions from a young lady, and gets swept up in a prostitution sting operation.

The man is charged with soliciting, and the officer posing as a heartland hooker claims he was asking for a massage while pointing at his crotch. The out-of-town farmer has a different story, but "he said/she said" isn't really the point of this.

The guilt or innocence of this guy isn't all that important either. On his behalf, though, I'll say that I've had to travel in Peoria a few times over the last six months, and the construction there has made the city less than navigable. I can understand how someone might lose his way — even someone who thinks he knows where he's going. But on the other side of the coin, Peoria has the reputation of being a bit of a sin city within a vast agricultural flyover desert. Big Al's downtown strip club is a rainy day institution for out-of-town sodbusters and there are rumours of more than one happy ending massage parlour doing fine business.

Yes, there are some things about this anecdote that don't ring necessarily true. The story presents this guy as a callow geezer, but he's only 48. And he also protests a bit too much and with plenty of earnestness, which often creates a credibility problem.

So why is this story even worth considering? It seems the Peoria Police Department has a policy of placing photographs and detailed personal information of arrested violators on its website before guilt has been established. Although the subject of this story was nabbed just a week before the Peoria PD had begun this practice, and he was spared such public embarrassment, his reaction to the policy is worth noting. He says, "It might be all right (to post johns' mug shots) after they are proven guilty . . . but to put it on there before a person is proven guilty . . . a person has certain rights, and that encroaches on them."

If this dude is, in fact, innocent, his presence on the website as a suspect would have devastated his everyday life in the small town where he lives. It's already been a trial for him as the news has spread only through word of mouth, and the ribbing he receives breaks down his dignity with every chuckle. These are the guys who end up with shotgun in mouth and no cinematically poetic note left behind to soothe the loved ones.

Every cliche you've ever read or heard about small towns is true. Your friends and the people who have known you your entire life never forget — anything. And the minor missteps stand out strongest. When you live daily with a painfully finite group of people, every action you take out of the ordinary sticks with you forever. It becomes a nickname, a shortcut, and simply who you are . . . for as long as you are alive. The anonymity that makes you both comfortable and lonely as hell in a big city doesn't exist in a small flyover town. You are exactly what people know about you, and it won't change.

Policies such as the one the Peoria PD employs amount to nothing less than a modern-day pillory — an unenlightened witch hunt that relies on accusation rather than facts as proven by the rule of law. Arrests, of course, are a matter of public record, but just because it is easy to post a mug shot on a website, should it be done? And what purpose is served?

My suspicion is that the Peoria PD, like any police department, gets extremely frustrated when cases against their collars are pleaded out or lost on judicial technicalities. Posting photos of suspected offenders provides public humiliation and punishment that might have been avoided if photos were posted only of those found guilty in the courtroom. So the police have taken it upon themselves to not only make arrests, but also to mete out judgments and punishments all in the service — I'm sure they would attempt to argue — of deterrence.

I don't know if this guy's story has any validity. Don't really care. Allowing the Peoria Journal Star to get into print the questioning of the PD's probably unconstitutional practice will be this suspect's biggest triumph.

In the meantime, if you're lost in Peoria and need to ask for directions, make sure you keep your hands in your back pockets.