When I say that I FREAKED out it is not an understatement.
I was in my own home in my bra and panties (it's hot and I don't have ac), innocent as the Virgin Mary and terrified. I yelled who is it through the door, even though I already knew. I moved my sleeping child to her room and closed her door and put a chair in front of it. I grabbed a robe from the bathroom and a knife from my kitchen. I sent a text to my man telling him the cops were here and he should NOT rush home. Because in reality I was more afraid of him being there than not being there.
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| Aiyana Stanley-Jones, killed by police in 2010 |
My primary thought was "protect my child and survive this interaction."
As I opened the door to the cops (and YES I know I didn't have to but in that moment I was not thinking clearly) I was shaking and fingering the knife in the pocket of my robe. I was trying to remember the things I learned in self defense if they tried me. The cops were talking as it occurred to me that that knife in my pocket would be all the reason they needed to "be afraid for their lives"
I wanted to smack myself. How stupid could I be?
The cop on my front step is showing me a picture and repeatedly saying, "Miss. Miss. Miss." I look at
the photo and tell him I have never seen that teenager before. He asks me who lives here.
I always thought I would be bad ass. I did trainings on safe police interactions for God's sake! I mean I actually taught fucking classes on this when I was in college. But no. I was too fucking scared. Too aware that my child was asleep in the other room. Too aware that I have no rights they have to respect.
I sang like a canary.
"It's just me and my child here now officer. My man is at the store. There are two other units in the back. This is a 3 family house."
I would have snitched on the whole world to get them away from my door and my child. I was terrified and the knife in my pocket no longer felt like protection. It felt like a death sentence.
As I write this I am still shaking.
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Old Rich Man In Tulsa Playing Cop Shoots Black Man.
Real White Cop Puts Knee On Head |
The cops realize they are at the right house but wrong door so they start to leave. My man comes running down the block and I'm shaking my head at him. Trying to let him know everything is okay. The cops walk out of my front gate as he makes it to the gate.
He looks at me and says, "everything okay?" I say, yes please come inside. He gives the cops the evil eye and I pull his Black ass in the house and slam the door shut.
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Ya'll this can't be life. This can not be the new normal. This is wrong.
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| Skip Gates Arrest after breaking into his own home |
Sighs We can't accept this ya'll. We can't live like this. This is so f*cking wrong.
There's this small incident I had with a police officer in the late 90s. It's boring. I won't relate it here. But this incredibly minor traffic stop comes my mind every single time someone tells a story about a scary encounter with police.
For a long time I couldn't figure out why.
I thought I was reviewing it in my head because I was trying to figure out if the white police officer in a very white town stopped me for driving while black. And I certainly did talk it over with friends and family for that reason. But a driving while black incident doesn't warrant the kind of mental attention I'd been giving it.
I've had other encounters with other policemen, most of them white males. And I haven't even given the one in Oklahoma, where I thought the guy was a little crazy, very much thought. I've also had encounters non-verbal incidents with white racists, while being a yankee down south, that I haven't given much thought.
A whole slew of incidents, that appear more serious on the surface, have not created hair-trigger memories like that minor traffic stop in 1990s .
It must have taken me more than a decade to admit that I wasn't just a little more nervous as usual during that traffic stop. It took a while because I used to decide what emotion I was allowed to have based on an analysis of what happened. But now I know that I was terrified even though all that happened was a cheap fix it ticket.
Once I admitted terror, I understood that I was replaying the film in my head trying in order to see what terrified me in the moment.
Unlike other traffic stops, I had no idea why he'd stopped me. I hadn't been speeding. I hadn't done a California Stop (rolling stop). My registration and insurance was up to date. I wound up being pulled over in a place less than a 1/4 mile from a main street.
Instead of telling me what I did, he said, "Can you get out of the car please."
That ratcheted the tension up a little. I obeyed like a robot. I don't think I asked a single question. But I had a bunch of unspoken questions once I got out of the car.
- Why are his hands resting on or hovering near his weapon?
- When he made me get out of the car, did he back up in a wide circle away from me? Did that I really see him do that?
- Why is he still standing so far back when he as he shows me some problem with my license plate?
- Why won't he just tell me what was wrong with it, now that I am at the back of the car?
- Why is he making me ask him what's wrong with it over and over?
- Why is he staring at me so hard?
- Why couldn't he tell me this kind of license plate cover isn't allowed in California while I was still in the car?
- Why is he so obviously frightened?
It took me more than a decade to realize that something other than a fix it ticket, did happen. At some point during the encounter I went from being annoyed at being stopped for driving while black to being terrified that he was going to shoot me.
Like Angela, I knew I hadn't done anything. I knew that I didn't have anything. I knew all my car stuff was up to date. But I felt this officer's terror over nothing but my skin color.
I can't know if my memory of his movements are accurate after all this time. But I do remember mine. I have a body memory of mine. I moved very, very slowly the entire time he was there. I made sure my hands never left his field of vision. I remember trying not to get shot.
As soon as he gave me the ticket and let me be on my way, I shut the terror down because "nothing happened." Nothing happened but a fix it ticket.
Don't these two stories describe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? I'm not a psychologist. But these stories seem like symptoms of PTSD or something very similar to it.
Do many of us, as black people, have some level of PTSD when it comes to white police officers? I know I've always felt this way about white police officers. Almost always. I remember how dismayed I was in elementary school when I was told a police officer would be coming for show-and-tell. When teacher said, "The policeman is your friend" my little 5 to 7 year old brain said, "Not MY friend." Up to that point, every image I'd seen on the news involving police officers and blacks involved civil rights workers, fire hoses, and german shepards with teeth sharp enough to rip my arm off.
I'm sure we've transmitted this fear down to our children. And that would be a bad thing if all the things black people are afraid of when it comes to white police officers weren't true so often. Then again, the fear makes you run.
We think we know why Walter Scott ran; He ran because he was poor and behind on child support payments. But we don't know why Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell ran. We don't know why Freddie Gray ran. And I'm pretty sure Mike Brown knew he couldn't run fast enough from the jump.
We can't out run bullets. Therefore, we have to stop running. We have to fix the PTSD independent of fixing a white supremacy policing. A black PTSD reaction in front of a white police officer, can get us killed today.
It could be a while before white culture fixes covert forms of white racism (covert even from the executor), so what do we do in the meantime? Training? Education? Knowing the law might help some of us to not panic if we practice too.
But what about people who feel the need to run because they are poor?
He looks like he was too big to have taken a chance on running, but we have to assume Eric Garner was selling loose cigarettes because he was poor. Walter Scott ran because he couldn't afford child support. Homeless, Malissa and Timothy probably didn't have registration and/or insurance.
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| Natasha McKenna Tasers banned at Virginia jail as a result of her death |
We have to do a few things at one time, while white culture gets a handle on white supremacy in the general population and police departments - not running; race specific police response training; basic law education; addressing jail and poverty issues; and mental hospital type treatment instead of law enforcement treatment for the mentally ill are just a few of these things.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/25/virginia-jail-bans-tasers-natasha-mckenna_n_7143930.html
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