Lines And Shadows: A Review Of The Literature

Lines and Shadows:

A Review of the Literature

Abstract

Lines and Shadows, by Joseph Wambaugh, tells the story of a group of regular San Diego street cops assigned to a task force designated to stop the victimization of illegal aliens by bandits in a hellish no-man's land near the Mexico-United States border. The officers soon realize the issue may be too big for regular street cops such as themselves, and many must deal with the psychological, emotional, and social conflicts caused and manifested by the events that occur during their mission.

Lines and Shadows, by Joseph Wambaugh, tells two stories simultaneously. One takes place at an imaginary line between two very different economies. The other takes place at the imaginary line between sanity and madness. Both of these imaginary lines are crossed as a result of the San Diego Police Department sending a task force of young officers, most of whom are Mexican-American, into a no-man's land south of San Diego known as "Deadman's Canyon", located near the Mexican border. Their function and purpose, they are told, is to arrest bandits that are victimizing illegal Mexican immigrants crossing the border into America.

The main theme of the book can be realized in the epilogue when is states "they did it the only way they knew-not ingeniously, merely instinctively-by trying to resurrect in the late twentieth century a mythic hero who never was...the Gunslinger." (Wambaugh, 1984, p. 382)" The message the author attempted to convey is, simply put, police were never meant to be action heroes. In my opinion, he is telling a story of what happens when law enforcement gets too caught up in the "crime fighting role" of policing. Wambaugh conveys this by revealing to us what happens to each of the members of the task force the more they go out into those canyons.

The mission of the unit was to arrest bandits who were victimizing illegal Mexican immigrants crossing the American border into the canyons nearby. At first they attempted to do this as commandos would. They armed themselves with shotguns and handguns and went out into the canyons with a strategy that consisted of ambushing the bandits while attempting to rob pollos. After this strategy failed miserably, the developed a new one. The unit decided to have a walking team consisting of the Mexican-American officers posing as pollos so they could attract the bandits to them. Once the bandits attempted to rob them, a severe beating and then an arrest would take place. They would have a support team waiting nearby to come in and help when things escalated. The support team consisted of Robbie Hurt and Dick Snider in the beginning, and Ken Kelly later on. They even carried the same cigarettes and matches that real pollos would, since bandits often demanded a smoke before victimizing the pollos. The unit consisted of approximately ten men, most of whom were Mexican-American. The man responsible for the idea of creating the task force, eventually known as B.A.R.F. (Border Alien Robbery Force) was Lieutenant Dick Snider. However as the experiment continued, he was pushed further and further out of the picture, until he was out of it completely, and Manny Lopez eventually not only became the leader but the sole symbolic figure of the force itself. The unit was deemed an "experiment" by the San Diego Police Department since nothing like this was ever done by police officers before.

There were several pros and cons regarding the mission of the unit. In my opinion, there were more cons. Some good came out of their mission, especially one event in particular. One night, while they came across a tunnel that crossed the border, they stumbled upon a group of young thugs terrorizing a number of pollos. One thug was about to rape a young Mexican girl, around age 12, while her mother watched hopelessly. Hence the team prevented the rape before it happened. The unit prevented another rape as well, that of a female pollo around age 24 by a bandit. They curtailed alien robberies for a short while, but in the end the robberies continued as before. As word of the task force spread due to much media attention, it did at least give the pollos a sense of hope. It also gave the San Diego Police Department good P.R.

There were many cons of the unit's mission. Lawmen from both countries were shot by other lawmen. The presence of the task force eventually caused bandits to start robbing pollos south of the border before the pollos even crossed. This of course caused the task force, comprised of American police officers, to cross into Mexican territory to continue their mission. Eventually tensions rose between the Tijuana police and the San Diego task force. Since the waking team had to pose as pollos every night they went out there, it became increasingly hard for the officers to jump in and out of role. They eventually started running from Border Patrol just as real pollos would. Since the violence escalated and the unit started to become involved in firefights with bandits and Mexican lawmen, the Sand Diego Police Department had to use time and manpower to send homicide detectives into the canyons to investigate.