Eyes

After wishing for years to be given the opportunity of filming some of the more mystical occupations of our Times--some of the more obscure Public Figures which the average imagination turns into bogeyman ... viz.: Policemen, Doctors, Soldiers, Politicians, etc. I was at last permitted to ride in a Pittsburgh police car, camera in hand, the final days of Sept. 1970. As to the film itself: Polis is eyes, said Charles Olson, having found the archeological root of the word-end of, say, metropolis, etc. Police is a clear etymological derivative of polis. The more current popular fix on these terms comes from, say, Dashiel Hammett's private eye. The Police then are public eyes; and they are expected to be Specialists of that ability to respond which most of the rest of society has lost all Metro sense-of.--S.B.