Rejected by the SPD

Why I'm not worthy of volunteer work
by Julia Eaton, contributor

I have done volunteer work, on and off, throughout my life. It started with little things like bake sales and car washes for charity. Then briefly as a teenager I delivered medical files or helped take patients for outings at Harborview Medical Center. More recently, I volunteered for local publications such as Synapse and the Washington Free Press. I have also volunteered at In-Touch, an organization offering therapeutic massage to people living with AIDS. For at least four hours a month I was able to help someone feel a little better when so much of their life had become about feeling bad. I did that for about a year and a half, but had to quit because of tendonitis.

I saw an ad in Sound Opportunities for volunteers needed to work as Domestic Violence Advocates for the Seattle Police Department. I've had my share of experiences with "domestic violence" including, when I was much younger, two years of living with a heroin addict who was physically abusive. For the last twelve years I've been healing from the scars of those experiences. Volunteering to help victims of domestic violence seemed like the perfect opportunity to reach out and help someone who was in the same emotional trap I was in twelve years ago.

I called the number that was listed and was told they would send me an application form and background check to fill out. After that, I was to come in for an interview before training, which was scheduled to begin in May 2000. When I received the paperwork and read what the volunteer work entailed, I was really excited. And the intense training--five full Saturdays in a row--would provide me with all sorts of valuable crisis intervention skills. The shifts were eight hours a month and we would be going to crime scenes after the perpetrator was apprehended, giving support and resources to the victims.

My background check went well until the question arose whether or not I had ever ingested an illegal drug or narcotic. I called a friend of mine who is a police officer in a neighboring city to ask his advice. I told him I was afraid to answer that question honestly because I didn't want to be disqualified. He pointed out that I had ten years clean from drugs and the police department would take that into account. I thought it would help to point out on the application that I wished to help other victims not turn to drugs as a way to cope, when there are so many other resources out there to help them. I answered the question honestly and hoped for the best.

At the volunteer interview, the volunteer coordinator praised me on my answers to the essay questions on the application. "You are exactly the type of person we need to volunteer," she said, "And we really need volunteers!" She praised me for having a spotless police record and a clean driving record. She seemed genuinely happy that I had signed up to volunteer.

Finally I asked the fateful question, "Is my drug history going to disqualify me?" The volunteer coordinator didn't look worried. She flipped through the pages to find the chart I'd filled out on the background check. I had to write the type of drug I'd used, how many times I'd used it, why I'd used it, and where I'd gotten it. All the answers to why I used drugs were basically the same; "to escape my life." I was embarrassed that for marijuana and cocaine I couldn't count how many times I had used them and just wrote "several." Despite all of that, the volunteer coordinator continued to appear hopeful as she explained to me that they had a specific number of years that a person had to be clean off of each drug. The maximum was five years for cocaine, which should be fine because I'd been clean for ten years.

But then she saw that I had done heroin. "I'm sorry, you're immediately disqualified," she told me. "But I only did it three times and that was over ten years ago," I explained. "I'm sorry. But if you've done heroin, you can't volunteer," she repeated.

"But if I'd been addicted to crack for half my life I could as long as I'd not done it in five years," I argued. "I never did crack. I thought that was worse?" "But you've done heroin. You can't volunteer for us."

One of my reasons beyond helping abuse victims--for volunteering for the Seattle Police Department was that I thought that maybe it would help me to get over my bitterness after WTO. I don't hold all of the officers in contempt--only the ones who acted out of line. Who I do look down upon is the department that sent officers out that week unprepared, to stand on the street for inhumanely long work shifts, without giving them the opportunity to eat or sit down or use the bathroom for an entire day at a time. The department that let about 100 people out of about 40,000 ruin what otherwise could've been peaceful and productive protests.

And here I--this boring 30-something who drives like a grandma and is pathologically honest with the IRS and on my background checks--am wanting to volunteer five full Saturdays for training, and one eight-hour shift a month to help them--all to help this organization that complains about not having enough man-power.

I don't know what having done heroin in my youth is supposed to mean, but apparently it is much worse than I realized. Maybe it means that I do not have the high moral character of all the people in the world who have not done heroin. I do not have the high moral character of someone who mugged people and robbed stores to feed a crack or speed addiction, or of someone who had tried heroin but lied on the volunteer application.

Ted Bundy could've volunteered for the SPD before he got arrested, since to my knowledge he never used heroin. I could go on and on and list people who must be so much better than me because no matter what deceitful thing they've done in their life, they never used heroin.

Perhaps, despite my confidence in myself, the minute I get to a crime scene where there may be drugs, I will be forced and compelled by the deepest, darkest, heroin-using contours of my soul to drop everything and buy dope from the perpetrator. Right there in front of the victims and the officers. Because of course, once a junkie--always a junkie. And of course, doing heroin even three times makes someone a junkie. What was I doing thinking that I was clean for ten years?

I'm horribly disappointed in the Seattle Police Department. Now, not just for the negligent and terribly misguided behavior of some officers and their superiors at WTO, but because of their crazy rules which are not based on an individual's merits but on a set of ignorant prejudices. As for my future volunteer work, I think I will volunteer for the PAWS wildlife rescue instead. At least I won't resent the organization that I'm trying to help.