Sure, I don't mind; it was something like 15 years ago anyway, and obviously didn't amount to anything in the first place.
Baltimore PD officers wear black uniforms. One night one of them was standing in the middle of the street I was driving down, and there weren't enough streetlights in that section. I was doing something like 40 in a 30, and the first thing I knew that anything was wrong was when I heard a loud thump from my left side. Looking in the wing mirror, I could see the guy in the light of the upcoming streetlight, where the one I'd last passed was too far back to show him.
So I pulled over and got out, because of course I did; I saw no personal benefit in complicating my upcoming arrest with a chase. Imagine my surprise when, on seeing my white skin, short hair, and slacks-and-button-down professional attire, he waved me off and went back to what he'd been doing!
In retrospect, I have to figure the mirror clipped something on his belt, rather than the car striking his actual person. But the fact remains that, had I not been white or not been easily "read" as an "upstanding citizen" type, I'd have been in a hell of a lot of trouble.
Especially since, being as I was on my way home from a visit to my connection, I had a quarter ounce of pot in my left front trouser pocket. Remember, this was back before decriminalization, more than a decade before dispensaries even existed in this town; not only that, but my guy hadn't had any baggies that night, so he just gave me the smaller portions he got from his own guy, who mostly did street work. So it would've been charged as possession with intent, and that's a felony.
The time I hit a cop with my car while I was carrying wasn't a major reason why I quit smoking that shit entirely a couple of years later, but never having another few seconds of that kind of sheer terror was not absent from the list of reasons why I was glad when I did quit.
Just imagine if I were a black man, though. That cop could have shot me dead on the spot and who'd have said a word? I mean, I so obviously would've had it coming, a drug dealer doing drug dealer crimes and, if that weren't enough, I swerved my car to try to murder a police officer in the middle of it. Probably had a gun in my back pocket, or in the glovebox at least. Who would dare blame an officer of the law for doing what he had to do in the face of an obviously murderous criminal like that?
...is what white people would mostly say. But that's the thing. I had that moment of terror because I was acting like a damn fool - I could drive more carefully and just quit buying pot, and I did. People of color can't "live more carefully", or "just quit" having their skin. And there is a night in my past that, if I had skin of a similar shade to theirs, it'd be through bars that I saw the next sunrise - if I had lived to see it at all.
I don't blame you for saying it sounds unrealistic. I'd probably likewise have some trouble taking a story like that seriously on its face, except that I happened to live it, and a lot of other wild stories too. But there are far more stories that I haven't lived, and some of them sound as wild to me as the one I've just told sounds to you. That's how life is, though. The world is far wilder than any one of us, with our individual and limited perspective, ever gets to see. If we want to understand how things really work in the places and times and lives that we don't get to see, we have to listen to the stories people tell us who do see those things - listen, and not assume that they must be lying, any more than you would assume I had been lying to you just now.
If you take anything away from this conversation, I hope you'll make it that.
>So I pulled over and got out, because of course I did; I saw no personal benefit in complicating my upcoming arrest with a chase.
>not been easily "read" as an "upstanding citizen" type, I'd have been in a hell of a lot of trouble.
This may have had more to do with with him waving you off than anything else. The type of people police are purportedly there to handle are not those who would do what you did. If this is Baltimore we're talking about, he may be tuned to a much more violent type of normal criminal encounter. Keep in mind that given the limited resources of the judicial system, they are better spent on more disruptive crimes to the social fabric.
Perspective is important in these things. Those that come to you to be dealt with are practically priority zero. They know they screwed up, and as long as you (the officer) is okay, then all's good. They'll sort themselves out.
It's the ones that don't the police are out and willing to do paperwork for.
Oh? And suppose he'd assumed when I got out of the car that I was going for a gun? They tell you these days that you do not ever get out of the car during a traffic stop unless instructed, and while this wasn't precisely a traffic stop, it wasn't all that far off - and I was far too frightened to be thinking about being careful with my hands. Or even to be thinking, really; I knew I was about to go to jail, and all I could fit in my mind beyond that was, I had better not try to make things even worse.
That officer made the judgment he did in a matter of seconds; as I noted in another comment here, I didn't have time to speak, or to take so much as a step toward the officer, before he waved me off - which was just as well in retrospect; God alone knows what I'd have said. But if any one aspect of the gestalt I presented had in any way varied from "harmless", he might well have drawn on me, and if he hadn't done that then he'd for damn sure have come over to see whether I was drunk or high or whatever the hell. And then he would have found my dope, and I would have gone to jail that night.
None of that would have happened because I was actually dangerous! He wasn't wrong to read me the way he did. But I was still extremely lucky that he did read me right. I could very easily have been less fortunate. And given everything I've seen in twenty years living in this town, I am very sure that the vast bulk of my good fortune that night lay in the accident of my having light skin.
Freddie Gray could talk about that, I think, if he were still alive to talk about anything. The federal consent decree that followed his death did not come about in a vacuum. And it is not in a vacuum that BPD officers interact with other citizens - both like and unlike myself - of this city.
>That officer made the judgment he did in a matter of seconds; as I noted in another comment here, I didn't have time to speak, or to take so much as a step toward the officer, before he waved me off - which was just as well in retrospect; God alone knows what I'd have said. But if any one aspect of the gestalt I presented had in any way varied from "harmless", he might well have drawn on me, and if he hadn't done that then he'd for damn sure have come over to see whether I was drunk or high or whatever the hell. And then he would have found my dope, and I would have gone to jail that night.
I don't see that as a "Thank God I'm White" outcome half as much as a "Thank God, he has something better to do!"
He could have been:
-Covering the exits of a hiding place of a known dangerous offender
-recon
-signaling someone or waiting for a signal from someone on the down low
-waiting on an informant
-up to no good in a part of town he shouldn't even have been on the beat in, and really not looking to explain why he was even there to make an arrest.
-on some other Op
To assume it was simply because you were white with no other data is really quite the knee jerk. Everything for a reason, and especially so with cops; a lone cop to boot.
Heck, you don't know. He might have been glad even if you were of a much darker complexion to see a brotha dressed for the office, pulling over and making every attempt to make himself easier to deal with rather than the alternative of a brotha in a trench coat/baggy clothes with a hand in his...oh shit!
Street wisdom is a thing. Supposedly, the better cops try to cultivate it amongst their numbers.
I get it's in vogue to assume that everyone is out to curbstomp the melanin enriched, but damn man. Cut the guy some slack. I mean he waved you off. Now I wish more cops extended the favor back, but, that's how it goes. Sometimes you get the ticket, sometimes you get let off the hook.
Yeah, I mean, that all sounds perfectly reasonable in a vacuum. But like I said before, none of this happens in a vacuum.
So what you're really doing here is, you're asking me to choose which to give greater credence. On the one hand, your reasonable-sounding thoughts in a vacuum about some purely theoretical interaction of cop and "brotha" (really?)
On the other, my so far twenty years of living in the city of Baltimore. Granted, as as a white man. But nonetheless, with eyes, ears, acquaintances across pretty much the whole spectrum of skin tones - two decades living in a busy city, you have time to meet a lot of people, especially when you do what most white people in this town don't do and use public transit a lot - and a subscription to the Sun paper. Plus, on top of my own experience and that of other people who've shared theirs with me, the outcome of the recent DOJ investigation, which accurately found "widespread unconstitutional and discriminatory policing in the city" [1] and that "...the Baltimore City Police Department (BPD) had engaged in a pattern and practice of conduct that violates the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and certain provisions of federal statutory law." [2]
So, left to weigh all of that in one hand, and your vacuous theorizing in the other...look, I get that you're coming at this in good faith, and I respect that. But do you really need me to explain in detail how and why this effort falls so far short of the mark?
You're arguing essentially that Baltimore cops deserve the benefit of the doubt on questions of racial bias in policing. As I said, in a vacuum, sure, that seems reasonable. But, though I'm sure it's as tiresome to hear it repeated as it is to have to say it over and over again, none of this stuff happens in a vacuum. And the argument you've made is totally unable to survive outside one, because even the most cursory look at the recent history of policing in Baltimore is enough to see that the benefit of the doubt is in no way here deserved.
Even under the Trump administration, the US Department of Justice doesn't give Baltimore cops the benefit of the doubt. The Baltimore Sun journalists who follow, investigate, and report on the actions of police in this city, they don't give Baltimore cops the benefit of the doubt. [3] The folks I've known and whose stories I've heard in this town, for whom grossly excessive violence and abuse of power on the part of police have been a regular feature of life in their communities, they don't give Baltimore cops the benefit of the doubt, either. In light of all that, why should I? Why should anyone?
I didn't apologize! Dude was sixty feet away still standing in the street when I got out of the car, I didn't say anything and neither did he. He looked me once over, waved me off, and forgot me.
And that's just my point. Based entirely on how I looked, he judged the incident to have been a harmless accident and not worth pursuing, despite that I had a felony charge worth of dope in my front pocket at the time. Pretty important, if you get to make that bust! But he never had any idea of the chance that passed him by, because, to him, I looked like somebody who wouldn't.
What I'm saying is, think for a minute about how that could've played out differently if, in that cop's eyes, I'd have looked a different way.
Baltimore PD officers wear black uniforms. One night one of them was standing in the middle of the street I was driving down, and there weren't enough streetlights in that section. I was doing something like 40 in a 30, and the first thing I knew that anything was wrong was when I heard a loud thump from my left side. Looking in the wing mirror, I could see the guy in the light of the upcoming streetlight, where the one I'd last passed was too far back to show him.
So I pulled over and got out, because of course I did; I saw no personal benefit in complicating my upcoming arrest with a chase. Imagine my surprise when, on seeing my white skin, short hair, and slacks-and-button-down professional attire, he waved me off and went back to what he'd been doing!
In retrospect, I have to figure the mirror clipped something on his belt, rather than the car striking his actual person. But the fact remains that, had I not been white or not been easily "read" as an "upstanding citizen" type, I'd have been in a hell of a lot of trouble.
Especially since, being as I was on my way home from a visit to my connection, I had a quarter ounce of pot in my left front trouser pocket. Remember, this was back before decriminalization, more than a decade before dispensaries even existed in this town; not only that, but my guy hadn't had any baggies that night, so he just gave me the smaller portions he got from his own guy, who mostly did street work. So it would've been charged as possession with intent, and that's a felony.
The time I hit a cop with my car while I was carrying wasn't a major reason why I quit smoking that shit entirely a couple of years later, but never having another few seconds of that kind of sheer terror was not absent from the list of reasons why I was glad when I did quit.
Just imagine if I were a black man, though. That cop could have shot me dead on the spot and who'd have said a word? I mean, I so obviously would've had it coming, a drug dealer doing drug dealer crimes and, if that weren't enough, I swerved my car to try to murder a police officer in the middle of it. Probably had a gun in my back pocket, or in the glovebox at least. Who would dare blame an officer of the law for doing what he had to do in the face of an obviously murderous criminal like that?
...is what white people would mostly say. But that's the thing. I had that moment of terror because I was acting like a damn fool - I could drive more carefully and just quit buying pot, and I did. People of color can't "live more carefully", or "just quit" having their skin. And there is a night in my past that, if I had skin of a similar shade to theirs, it'd be through bars that I saw the next sunrise - if I had lived to see it at all.
I don't blame you for saying it sounds unrealistic. I'd probably likewise have some trouble taking a story like that seriously on its face, except that I happened to live it, and a lot of other wild stories too. But there are far more stories that I haven't lived, and some of them sound as wild to me as the one I've just told sounds to you. That's how life is, though. The world is far wilder than any one of us, with our individual and limited perspective, ever gets to see. If we want to understand how things really work in the places and times and lives that we don't get to see, we have to listen to the stories people tell us who do see those things - listen, and not assume that they must be lying, any more than you would assume I had been lying to you just now.
If you take anything away from this conversation, I hope you'll make it that.