The Policeman's Tale
Behind the badge on the night shift by Van Vander wall illustrations by Jon Borda s Portland State University’s campus police are, as Officer Matt Masunari says, “a small police agency in a big city.” The jurisdiction of the Campus and Public Safety Office (CPSO) extends only as far as the campus itself: I-405 in the south and west; Market Street at the north end; and the buildings of SW 4th Avenue to the east. Two-way radios in the vehicles and at the office monitor activity on the channels of the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) to enable the agencies to cooperate when necessary; Masunari says situations requiring interagency work are infrequent. Night shift at CPSO begins at 11 p.m. On a cold and rainy Saturday night in early April, I accompanied Officer Matt Masunari on his duties for about three hours to see what a day in the life of a police officer is like. Contrary to my assumptions, the weekend nights are quiet for CPSO. During the first part of the shift, shop, Officer Masunari drove the police
cruiser on the streets bordering and running through campus, making the occasional detour to slowly drive through its parking structures and parking lots. As we made our rounds, our conversation moved to times past. Before his career as a CPSO officer began in 2015, Masunari studied ancient Latin and Greek literature at Oregon State University. He came to PSU as a graduate student with a particular focus on 3rd century BCE Roman history. Masunari’s former judo instructor and mentor from Corvallis had already moved to Portland and told him of a job opening at CPSO. Masunari applied and has now been with the agency for over four years. Masunari’s dedication to police work is matched by his passion for the literature and history of the Hellenic world. “The Roman Republic was a unique time in Roman history,” Masunari said. “They integrated other peoples as citizens more completely than Sparta or
Athens did.” This confederation of Italian and Gallic tribes lasted five hundred years before the Senate granted Octavian unprecedented power as Augustus, making him the first true Roman emperor. The squad car moved slowly through the University Place Hotel’s dark parking lots, its beams illuminating small patches of the night. Our discussion continued. “Augustus had major legitimacy issues,” Masunari said of the Roman emperor’s attempts to justify autocratic rule to the citizens of a republic with nearly half a millennium of history and precedent. Augustus commissioned Virgil to compose The Aeneid to link the new form of monarchy and its male lineage to the Homeric epics and Hellenic legend. “The Iliad is about losing innocence and The Odyssey is about trying to come back after loss and trauma. The Aeneid is a story about the emergence of Roman masculinity,” says Masunari. THE PACIFIC SENTINEL
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