[img]139|left|Jessica Gadsden||no_popup[/img] It could be any large city in America, any day of the week, any week of the year. Last week it was New York City. A white police officer, Andrew Dunton, shot (six times, mind you) and killed a black police officer, Omar Edwards, who had just gone off duty. The white cop’s excuse: It was an armed black man. Last time I checked, any police officer who’d just gone off duty would have been – well – armed.
C’mon, Charlie Rangel had it right. He said what many of us (black folks at least) think, but no one wants to say in public. In response to a throwaway question by a New York Daily News reporter, Rangel quipped that on Obama’s upcoming New York City visit he should “Make certain he doesn’t run around in East Harlem without identification.”
It was funny and true in a gallows humor sort of way. Funny in the way that I still laugh at George W. Bush pretending to look for weapons of mass destruction around the oval office in a slide show he produced for the 2004 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. But the fact of the matter is if Obama weren’t President, and the people running around with side arms weren’t hired to protect him, I’d have given the POTUS the same advice.
A Wealthy Leader Responds
After the usual media-manufactured hullabaloo of what Rep. Rangel said, New York City Mayor and resident billionaire Michael Bloomberg responded that while the incident was tragic, there was no reason to suspect there were “any racial overtones.” That’s like saying that a lynching is just an unauthorized hanging.
My parents surely weren’t billionaires, and as New Yorkers conscious of our society’s “racial overtones,” they warned me early and often about police officers. They were, under all circumstances, to be avoided. Of course, this contradicted what we children were taught in school: If we get lost, look for an officer.If we need help, use a pay phone and dial 9-1-1. My lessons at home were different. Police officers meant “stay away.” When I asked why, my mother was blunt. “They will shoot you in the back, and you will die.”
My mama didn’t raise no fool. Though I was only three or four at the time, and didn’t quite understand the nuances of the lesson, I heeded it. The seriousness with which it was delivered did not invite disobedience. And some 30-odd years later, every time I open a newspaper or flip past a news channel and see that some black person, child or adult, innocent or guilty, civilian or police officer, has been shot and killed without provocation, I realize that it was among the best lessons I ever learned.
A Very Temporary Relief
A little over a decade ago, a New York federal judge, Harold Baer, made headlines by finding officers had no reasonable suspicion to stop a black woman driving in the “high crime” neighborhood of Washington Heights. When the car parked, police approached a group of black men who had come to greet the vehicle, and the men scattered. The judge, observant about how life really is in New York City, with all its racial overtones, wrote in his opinion that residents in the neighborhood tended to regard police officers as corrupt, abusive and violent. Had the men not run when the cops began to come upon them, that would have been unusual and suspicious, he said. Under mounting political pressure, the judge later took the unusual and suspicious step of reversing himself.
The U.S. Supreme Court suffered no such confusion when it encountered a similar situation several years later. In an opinion by the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a rich man, but not nearly the billionaire that is Mayor Bloomberg, found that unprovoked flight in a “high crime” area is enough to get a black man stopped by the police. Fortunately, wealthy white men like Rehnquist, who don’t ever seem to live in areas labeled “high crime,” are spared the daily indignity (and apparent health risk) of being a black man living in a black (or is that “high crime?”) neighborhood patrolled by white police. Thanks to the former Chief Justice, to this day running from the police in a poor neighborhood, apparently gives them the right to chase you down, even kill you.
But What About You?
My dear husband pointed out, while reading over my shoulder as I typed this, that I haven’t been pursued by the police ever – so why do I worry? Being shot dead only has to happen once. And I’d like to avoid it. Also, I pointed out, I never ever interact with police. Never. Consorting with people who have loaded weapons can only lead injury. Just ask Harry Whittington – Dick Cheney’s erstwhile quail hunting companion.
In a perfect world, I’d like to live in a city where the police actually police. But after years of living in large cities, it’s obvious that the police are all about keeping the wealthy and the white safe, while allowing the poor, black and brown, to figure it out for ourselves. I’ve lived in South Los Angeles (formerly—and better—known as “South Central”). Neighbors would call the police, and if they responded at all, it was often reluctantly and hours later. In contrast, when suspects fled robberies in nearby Beverly Hills or the Fairfax District, cops would prowl our neighborhoods, guns drawn and at the ready to catch suspects who had dared set foot in the wrong part of town. Yet the murder rate in South Los Angeles continues, unimpeded by law enforcement.
I’ve also lived in what a recent Council candidate referred to as “the wealthiest Council district in Los Angeles.” Guess what? The police are here faster than you can exhale – to protect the property rights of those with money. Just the other day, there were six police cruisers and a helicopter responding to a dispute between a celebrity and her next door neighbor . . . over a tree. That’s right. A tree. A matter that should have been handled in Small Claims Court occupied the time of folks who could have been solving, or preventing, a murder in North Hollywood, Pacoima or maybe even South L.A.
But that’s not what it’s about, is it? Even in the one City of Los Angeles, there’s really a tale of two cities. Police may work for some, but for other law-abiding citizens, like me, they will always pose more of a threat.
So if you see me and a police officer within one block of each other, we will always be moving in opposite directions. My personal safety is paramount.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, “Law School Supports Drug Use”—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. She's a reformed lawyer, and full time novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course.This will mark the debut of our newest, and perhaps most charismatic, weekly essayist. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
Ms. Gadsden’s essays appear every other Tuesday. She may be contacted at www.pennermag.com.
