21. Police and thieves

Back in the seventies, when we were talking about drugs and how to deal with the whole increasing phenomenon, we always blamed somebody else and not our system to deal with the phenomenon, the information and the education. In a very prejudice way gypsies always hold the leading role in this blaming game. Then it was the foreigners and the rock music. But never us, never the state, never our over-polluting and over-consuming society we had build, never the loneliness and the misery this society had brought to us, never; it was always the others.

Of course in Finland there are …the usual suspects when it comes to blaming, it is the Russians or the Roma people and I really want to ask sometimes if they could collect all the Russians in this country and all the gypsies do they think that all the problems would be solved? Of course not but it is easier to blame the others for your failures.

This thing with blaming the Russians for everything in this country is a long story which I’m planning to talk about one day but this moment is not the right time. At the moment I had a crime unveiling in front of me and I was just watching. I checked the others around me and it seemed one more time that I was the only one noticing. But then turning left I saw them coming. Two private security people, the ones responsible for the security of the mall. Private security people are another thing always confusing me in Finland and I often have the sense that they stand between legality and illegality.

They are not police which means they have nothing to do with the rights a policeman has and definitely they don’t have the obligations a policeman has but they act like they are policemen without the obligations part. They don’t carry guns like policemen but I’m sure the way they carry themselves that some of them carry something, it might be just an electric thing or something similar; they definitely carry truncheons something definitely illegal in most European counties at least the ones I lived. I have seen them using it as well, hitting people, handcuff them, drag them and behave in a way no policeman would ever dare behave.

The police from the other side leaves them do it with the excuse that there is no enough personnel to cover everything and perhaps in a way blackmailing the state for more personnel or budget. I don’t know but all these games always make me sick and always prove to me that our democracies are in danger from inside. So the two security guards were getting closer and nothing seemed to make the gang worry. Both of them looked like I watch too many action films and my dream is to be Rambo I just have even less brain than him types and they were coming very slowly making sure that all the sixteen year-olds had noticed them. One of them gave a look at the gang that was standing still now in the corner of the shop and to my astonishment smiled at one of them. Yes he did smile! This is the part I felt sick and I left the café somehow running.

The last customer that had reached the couple could not have been older than sixteen. Times like that I feel like screaming and start hitting anybody around me doesn’t matter what would happen to me. But I didn’t and that made me feel a coward and even more sick of my self this time. Of course I had my excuses, I could go to the police but could I trust the police? I had seen the play so many times before where the police instead of been the solution became part of the problem and sometimes the problem itself. The only thing for a fact you learn when you grow up in a big city is keep away from the police, in the end you will be the one with the problem not the ones who should. And I did so. I just took the next metro home trying to put the whole thing somewhere deep in my mind.

The game police and thieves we used to play when we were young had been so much twisted you didn’t know who really the police were and who the thieves were any more. Why am I always the one who notices things like that? Why cannot be like Marc or Richard, never seen anything even when it happens next to me. Worst of all why should I always carry the guilt of not doing anything while I knew that I do what I can and storming against them with my fists was not a solution with the only one hurting in the end being me.

I was really angry when I got back home feeling like kicking everything in front of me and the only thing two cigarettes one after the other managed to do was instead of calming me down to give me a really bad headache. The last few months I had manage to limit my daily cigarettes and suddenly today it was like I was trying to get the missing time. And then I looked to my right to see him watching me. This time he was standing outside Leena’s door.

The man definitely had issues and I was not in the mood for him now so I entered inside and started making a coffee. Leena, the other Leena hadn’t answered any message yet and only Mandy had tried to call me …let me see, four times! I added two heavy spoons of instant coffee to my cup and then water and milk from the freeze and started drinking it right there standing in front the kitchen. I didn’t want to look but I was sure that he was still there watching my patio and waiting for me. This was definitely going to be an interesting day!

All characters and events depicted are fictional, and any resemblance to persons living, dead, or fictional or situations past, present, or fictional is purely and completely coincidental.