Feature Articles

A young Cop

“It’s not the nicest thing to carry a gun,” says Marcus Adams*. Nevertheless, the young police officer likes to be a cop. What makes daily work at the Gold Coast harder, and sometimes affects the officers negatively, is the lack of respect people have.

Written by Michael Winkelmann

When I first meet Marcus, he wears sneakers, colourful shorts, and a Billabong T-Shirt. He is obviously not on duty. The only signs of being a Cop are the short haircut and the sunglasses you see on many police officers. The glasses are sharp, slim, full black and from Oakley. When a Cop questions you about your speeding, the glasses make him look more aggressive, and a bit scary. On Marcus in his leisure dress, they look irritating.

He takes them off and looks ten years younger. He is 23. “I look older,” Marcus says. “It is difficult to arrest people who are around my age because I can see myself doing the same silly things in the past,” he admits. Sometimes he feels bad about sending young guys to court.

Marcus is careful about what he says. The words and sentences come slowly out of his mouth. He repeats answers, often remains vague, uses the terms “like I said” and “nowadays” a lot, and creates difficult sentence structures. “Speaking from a statistics point of view, it is a mixture of tourists and locals who cause problems in Surfers Paradise,” is an example of how he answers questions in the beginning. He appears to me like the ambassador of the Gold Coast police force.

He decided to join the force with his best friend when they were still in high school. His uncle is a police officer. His dad is in the army. “I like the different lifestyle. You have mornings free or days off when everybody else has to go to work,” the young man declares.

I feel a little embarrassed to ask the classic cop question: “Did you ever have to use your gun?” but this actually broke the ice. The answer comes quick; the sentences are short and detailed:

“I only had to pull it out once, in a car chase. The vehicle that we were chasing failed to stop when we pulled them over. They took off and we chased them. We didn’t know why they were running. There were only two of us in the car and four of them. The car actually crashed into a poll. The driver got out and started running off. My partner got out of the car and chased him by foot. I was left by myself against three people that were still in the car. They were all young males. One of them had a bottle in his hand. It was very dark it was night; it was 2 o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t see if they had any weapons on them. I was basically just outnumbered. When I pulled it (the gun) I didn’t have a finger on the trigger. It was more a tactic to defend myself and to make them submit to my demands, which in that case worked perfectly. I hope that I never have to use it. I know some officers that have, and it affected them greatly.”

“What a lot of people don’t understand is that police is not only there to arrest people or write parking tickets. 90 Percent of our time is actually helping people,” Marcus declares.

I ask him, what is the best experience he has had so far. He told me how a family hugged him, after he informed them about the death of a family member. “It’s not fun to go to somebody’s house when somebody has passed away but you get the reward of being there for the family,” the police man says. “They really appreciate what you are doing and they know that it is not an easy job,” he points out. He comes back to this again and again in the interview.

The Gold Coast is a very violent area. “Incidents with drunken males, especially in Surfers Paradise, seem to be a never ending stream. It affects the cops in Surfers. They tend to act harsh and sometimes overreact. Nobody stays longer than a couple of years in the precinct,” Marcus explains. “The cops in Surfers have low tolerance, having worked there you can see why. They deal with drunken idiots all day, every day. They can’t get away from it because the station is right in the middle of it. They deal with a lot of crap,” he adds.

Surfers Paradise: “The cops can’t get away from it.”

In fact, Marcus has already planned his way out. After high school, and before joining the police, he traveled Europe for a year. He does not regret joining, but sometimes regrets having joined so early in life. “I want to travel and see the world again. Working as police officer in an overseas embassy is my dream,” he admits. For this reason, he is learning German, but he does not always feel comfortable in his language classes. He excuses himself when he does not know the answer, and gets red-faced easily. In class the cop seems younger than he is.

During the interview his mobile rings a couple of times. Marcus does not even blink. This interview is now the most important thing for him. He first checks his cell phone after we have finished and said goodbye. Self control and discipline are important to him.

He sees a major problem in how children are raised nowadays. “People don’t have the respect that they used to have for the police, say ten years ago. Nowadays fifteen-year-olds back chat at us and call us names. When I was that age and a cop said something to me I would be scared of them almost because of their power. Nowadays they don’t care and have no respect for the position.” When he says that, he seems to be much older.

Marcus thinks that, “a lot of parents aren’t bringing their kids up; a lot of parents did when I was their age. For example when we did something wrong our dad hit us with his belt or a wooden spoon. It was a pretty common thing back then. Nowadays people don’t do these things because they don’t believe in abusing their children. The younger generation is growing up with no discipline,” says the 23 year-old in the Billabong T-Shirt.

*Name changed; Police Officers in Queensland must not give interviews.

7^th May 2009

“We created a place the people like. That’s the problem!”

Every morning students queue in front of the Griffith Gold Coast library entrance, waiting for the doors to open. The place gets crowded soon at weekdays. The library is popular, maybe too popular.

Written by Michael Winkelmann

Libraries are like rock concerts. Maybe not all of them but the University Library on the Griffith Gold Coast Campus shows some similarities.

People queue to get in. Inside it is crowded. Most visitors are young. At the end of the day, the waste bins are full and everybody leaves exhausted and tired. And it is hard to get a close parking lot.

At a concert people’s expectations and the work of the staff decide if it is a successful show or not. However, people complain. Sarah Marsanich, an engineering student from Griffith University says the library opening hours are ridiculous. “I would like to start studying early in the morning, and I also think the library closes too early on Friday nights, and opens too late on Sunday mornings.” The 21-year-old wants to start early in the morning to get a free study room. “We really need more of these. We have so many new students on Campus this year and the facilities didn’t provide new space,” she explains.

“We run out of space a bit, there are too many people in the library,” Griffith University Student Sarah Manamee wines. Especially in the afternoon it is hard to find a free table, a chair or even a power point for your computer.

To be the first in the morning is a phenomenon on the Campus. People can be spotted waiting already from seven in the morning and the group grows heavily until eight o’clock. From Monday to Friday around 40 people line up at the entrance. “I like the library to be open at 7 30 in the morning and so does all the other people around me,”says medical science student Thiru Kanesalingam.

The chaos of a concert can only be solved with a professional staff that thinks ahead and sees ahead. Illeana Whelan, the team leader of the library lending services could easily organize a rock concert. She absolutely looks ahead and recognizes potential problems.

As soon as she realizes that I am interviewing people in front of the library I got her attention, and a seat in her office. “We should buy more beanbags because the students like to carry them around the whole building,” exclaims Illeana. She understands some of the students’ complaints but she can’t help with the opening hours. “We only have a certain amount of staff to do the work. It is just not economical. I hate to say that it is a financial thing but it is part of it.”

From my experience I know that a lot of university libraries in Germany are open nearly 24 hours and run by security guards most of the time. Illeana assures me that it has been discussed, but she assumes the students will expect help when they are in the library. German students on the other hand don’t usually expect help from the library staff outside the regular opening hours. The security staff isn’t trained in the library work. “It would be difficult to handle Campus security and running the library at the same time,” she says and shakes her head. There is nothing to do about it.

She thinks that the students arrive so early at the university in order to get a free parking space. “Even if they have paid for their semester parking ticket, chances are small to find an empty lot after 7.30.” In other words, the parking situation would force the students to queue in front of the library in the morning. This is absolutely not Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Every Rock concert needs someone who runs the show – The manager of the band, the brain of the whole organization. The Griffith Library has its manager on the first floor. And most of the time when you want to speak with someone important or with someone from the music industry you have to wait.

The waiting room of the library is a funny place. It has an empty book shelf. Is it a symbol perhaps? Or are all the books lent out at the moment? No time to think about it now as Con Graves the library manager has time for an interview with me right away. His office has big windows and a good view of the Student Services building on the other side. During our interview he uses a black board from time to time to illustrate his thoughts. “We created a place the people like and that is the problem,” Con exclaims. A clear view and clear thoughts are very important in here.

The success and ongoing popularity of the library is a good sign for him. The place got renovated last year to fulfill the needs of the students. He is proud that the size of the library is nearly doubled.

“This is a fourth generation library,” he explains. People don’t have to come here anymore to collect information in form of books to take them home. The students can access the knowledge of the building via the Internet from anywhere and use the databases and journals for their research. “The book usage has been falling for years. We focus here on learning and teaching, group work, presentation and computer work.”

The idea is to create a nice atmosphere where people get together. Illeana the lending manager, called it a “meeting point”. Upstairs is a quiet zone, no music, no mobiles and small one person learning pods with a view of nature. Downstairs people can chat with their friends or listen to the music during their studies.

By the way Mr. Graves wishes everybody good luck with the combination of listening to music and learning.

In the beginning I got 15 minutes time for my interview. We are over the time and his secretary comes in to tell him what time it is. Not very subtle but I haven’t turned out to be a troublemaker and so there is no urgent appointment for him and we can continue.

“The beach changes with the tide,” says Con. What does it mean for the library? During assessment times the library will change their opening hours to hold out against the students’ run. “Out of this time people don’t use the building so often,” he explains.

He wants to transform his rock concert into a rock festival. “We will create more group work areas in the computer labs that are open twenty four hours. At the Nathan Campus we experiment with outdoor areas where people have Internet and power points at group tables.”

By creating different stages all over the Campus he hopes to take pressure away from the library. At a festival you have to decide if you want to see Metallica on the main stage, the new Indie insider tip on one of the side stages or go over to the guy who juggles with flaming swords and seems to be half drunk. The Griffith Campus will become a Music Festival. Well, nearly.