When People Hate Police.

I’ve been pulled over by the cops, twice. When I was pulled over the second time, I was living in Colorado. When the cop asked me for ID, registration and insurance, I went through great lengths to explain all of my movements. The cop was nice but their kindness in the moment was not enough to undo all that I knew about cops and how they tend to treat Black people. I moved slow and with intention. “My ID is in the glove box in my wallet. Is it okay if I reach over, open the glove box and get my wallet?” I didn’t move until I received verbal confirmation from him.  

I have only been stopped twice and yet I feel uneasy around cops. Both interactions I would say were positive but my mind reminds me of what I know to be true. What I know is that I still need to be on guard. I need to be agreeable and easy to handle. I need to have easy to follow motions and actions. I want to make it home. The goal is always survival. If you’re Black in this country you can’t just assume that you’ll survive even the most innocent of interactions with police.

As I was reflecting on that day and my thoughts on law enforcement, I thought about people who live/d in stop and frisk or stop and identify cities. Places where police could legally stop you while you’re walking down the street at whim. Some cities required reasonable cause but most did not. So, in those places if the cops saw you walking down the street and thought that you looked “suspicious” they could stop you and frisk you. If you’ve never been frisked or aren’t familiar with the term, it’s when the police search you for illegal weapons, or drugs.

The New York Times did an article on Mike Bloomberg last year and explored stop and frisk and the lives that it impacted during his time as Mayor. According to the article, from 2002 to 2013 police in New York City recorded 5,081,689 stops with Black and Latino/a residents being nine times more likely to get stopped than white residents.

The article goes on to say; “The strategy was used with such intensity that officers in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville conducted 52,000 stops over eight square blocks between January 2006 and March 2010. The equivalent of one stop for EACH resident there EVERY year. The arrest rate was less than one percent for the 14,000 residents.” Emphasis mine.

Let that sit with you for a second. Read it again if you need to. The arrest rate was less than one percent. That means that 99% of the people that were stopped and harassed and assaulted were innocent. They were not in possession of anything illegal and they were not participating in illegal activities. So why were these people, Black and Latino/a people, stopped repeatedly? Why were they considered suspicious? It’s as if the cops had a definition for suspicious hanging in their cars and it read “anything Black or brown.”

I can understand why someone living in the Brownsville neighborhood would hate the police. Someone who was stopped once a year, once a quarter, once a month but never arrested. Someone who watched their dad or their brother or their mom get stopped and frisked repeatedly. Someone who was stopped and frisked in front of a first date; or stopped and frisked in front of their school before a big presentation. Someone who was stopped and frisked on their way to a job interview or while walking with their younger siblings to the park.

I can understand how someone who knew someone who grew up in Brownsville would hate the police. I can understand how someone who knew someone, who knew someone that grew up in Brownsville could hate the police. I can understand how someone could read about what happened in Brownsville and end up hating the police.

What happened in Brownsville and what happened in New York City are two examples of many. When we do our research, we find injustice after injustice. We find wrongful deaths, planted drugs, people assaulted in custody, people killed in their sleep. We find consent decrees (if you don’t know what this is, you would benefit from looking it up) and in pretty much every city we see these injustices disproportionately affecting Black people and people of color. We find a system that allows racists to hide behind a badge and allows people like Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankinson and Myles Cosgrove to seemingly get away with murder. And some still struggle to understand why people are so upset. Why people are so distrustful. Why there are calls for forces to be defunded and for money to be reallocated to professionals who seem to be better equipped and trained to serve and protect us.

I can understand how someone could read about Breonna Taylor and end up hating the police. I can understand how someone could read about what happened to Rodney King and end up hating the police. I can understand how someone could read about what happened to Freddie Gray and end up hating the police. I can understand how someone could read about slave patrols, one of the first concepts of policing in our country and hate the police. I can understand how someone could read about the inception of blue lives matter and hate the police. I can, can you?

I think a large part of why there is so much division, is the complete lack of empathy for the very real experiences that Black people are having. If an entire group of people are saying that they don’t feel protected by the people that make another group feel most safe; you have to take a second and ask yourself, why? Why do Black people feel that way? What is happening that is making them feel unsafe, unprotected and unserved? What is going on?

Something is wrong with the way that policing is done in this country. Something is terribly wrong. If you don’t understand why people are upset you might not have a diverse enough group of friends. If you think that police rarely, if ever do anything wrong, you may not be reading enough books and articles by Black authors. If you don’t understand how someone could feel anything but love and admiration for police officers, you may be naive. You may also just be white. Which means that you’ve likely never experienced any of these things, which is fine. The goal isn’t that we all experience oppression but rather that none of us do. You don’t have to experience these things in order to acknowledge that it’s happening and that something is wrong.

If you feel the urge to comment “blue lives matter” or “back the blue” I hope that before you do, you’ll consider my words. Take a second and just listen. Take some time to center Black voices and the experiences of Black people. Listen until you understand. Listen until you can empathize. Listen until you can really hear us. Listen until you can see why some people hate the police. I can understand why they do, can you?

Driving while black.

When I was a teenager, just learning how to drive, I got pulled over by a cop. My mom was in the passenger seat and I had just paused at a stop sign instead of coming to a complete stop. Within seconds lights flashed in my rear view mirror and that well known sound swirled in my ear. 

As I pulled to the side of the road I immediately started to cry. The cop, a white man,  walked up to my window and when he saw my tears began to comfort and encourage me. He told me that I had run a stop sign but that I wasn't in trouble and didn't need to cry. He said that he had a teenager daughter at home and that he when he saw me, he thought of her and that he wants both of us to be safe drivers. 

He didn't give me a ticket or a warning but he did give me a hug through the window. That was the only time I had ever been pulled over, until recently. 

I was driving home from having brunch with Patrick's mom, about a month or so ago, when a cop pulled up behind me and turned on his lights. 

I pulled over to the side of the road, rolled down my window and put my hands in plain sight on the steering wheel. The officer introduced himself and attempted to make small talk. He told me that I was going over the speed limit but if everything came back clear he would let me go on my way. 

With one hand on my window and the other on his gun, he asked for my license and registration. I told him that my license was in my purse, under my seat and asked for permission to reach down and grab it, he said "Yes, of course." I then told him that my registration was in my glove box and asked for permission to reach across the seat to get it, he again said "Of course." 

I've only been pulled over twice in my life and both times the officer was extremely kind but despite his kindness the second time I struggled to shake my fear. I remember being hyper sensitive of my hand placement before the officer even got to my window and making a conscious decision to not cry, to not be afraid and to not be a statistic. 

You see, I knew that when he ran my information that nothing would come back and that I had nothing to hide. Even with all of this in mind, the memories and images from months and months of videos and articles of people who look like me, being shot and killed by people like him, had me a little shook. 

Growing up my friends and my brothers and I made a lot of jokes, in very poor taste, about slavery and racism. We made jokes about driving while black and black people being picked on by cops. We could joke about these things because it was something that was never on the back of our heels or knocking on our front door. 

We don't make those kinds of jokes anymore. 

African Americans make up only 13 percent of the US population, yet account for 24 percent of those that are fatally shot by police. That means that African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to get killed in an interaction with a police officer than White Americans. According to the Washington Post, in 2015 of all of the unarmed people shot and killed by police, African American men made up 40% of that number even though they only make up 6% of our countries population. 

After I got pulled over by the cop I told a few of my friends the story and as some laughed at my response and how I reacted I was reminded that I was the only person of color in the group. The more we talked, the more they understood my reaction and emotions but I couldn't undo the realization of how heavily our perspectives have shaped our views on the world. 

When I see and read about people of color being shot and killed for petty crimes or committing no crime at all, I see myself. I don’t just see a black man or a little black boy, I see my brothers and my nephews…I see family.

When the cop finished checking my information and told me that I was all clear to go, I just sat there for a few moments. I imagined what it’s like to have a seemingly simple stop escalate for one reason or another, to the point where someone leaves in a body bag. I thought of Philando Castile and Sandra Bland, I thought about Tamir Rice and Eric Garner and how I wished they could have gone home.

I thought about all of the men and women who serve as police officers in this country and how everything that they do is now under a microscope. I thought about fear and prejudice and preconceived notions and how all of those things culminate.

I just sat there, with sweaty palms and a racing heart, thinking.

 Despite all of the things I’ve read and seen I still believe in people. I still believe in police officers and I believe that African Americans are more than just something to be oppressed in our society. May my experience of kindness and thoughtfulness from an officer become the norm. May our men stop being feared and officers stop being hated.

May driving while black, stop being a death sentence and go back to simply being a description of my daily commute.

The importance of representation.

This week I went on one of my first field trips in years. Myself and a few of my colleagues took a group of thirty high school students on a trip to the Denver Police Department and it was awesome.

DPD is one of the many groups that sends their staff to mentor in our classrooms. Out of the 30 students that we took, about ten or so of them have mentors that are cops. It was such a positive and inspiring experience because having cops as their mentors has completely changed their perception of law enforcement. Where these students once saw just a badge and someone who saw them as only a nuisance, they now see a mentor, friend and a role model. 

Something that really impacted me from the experience was meeting the Executive Director of safety for Denver. The person that holds this position is in charge of over seeing everything that has to do with safety in Denver, that includes fire, police and the sheriffs department. Pretty much the Executive Director is the head honcho, the main boss and all around a big deal and surprisingly to me an African American woman. 

When Executive Director O'Malley, stood in front of us and started welcoming us and sharing about her role and responsibilities, I was mystified. It was so cool to see someone that looked like me and like a lot of the female students that we brought on the trip, holding the highest position in the building and one of the highest positions in the city. I hung on to every word that she shared and when she finished I sat back in my chair feeling like I had just experienced something really important. 

When the field trip wrapped up and I walked my group of students back to the train I was deeply moved by the conversations that I overheard.

"I think I want to be a cop someday," one girl said, " I think I want to be like the Director of safety," another young lady shared. Where they once struggled to see possibilities, they now saw themselves represented clear as day. 

It is so important for young people of color to see themselves portrayed in high profile jobs and in the media. I am overjoyed that kids that are in school right now are able to grow up having lived through the tenure of our first black president. I'm excited that young ladies are able to see the first African American Bachelorette. More than anything, I'm elated over that fact that my students are able to see people of color holding offices that are impacting their communities. 

Mentioning the Bachelorette makes me feel a little silly but honestly I do think that this is monumental for young women of color. For them to turn on their televisions and turn to one of the most popular shows in this country and see someone who is educated, wise, beautiful, composed AND looks like them...that's important. 

Representation is a necessity. I was reminded of the importance of that this week. Growing up I so wanted to be a doctor and when I got to college and the road was rougher than I thought, I dropped that dream like a hot plate. This week was the first time, since changing my major and exploring different career options, that I wondered if my choices could have been different. If I had grown up being mentored by a woman of color that was a doctor or if I had a doctor that was a person of color, would I have made a different choice? 

Would I have tried harder? Where I saw uncertainty and the impossible would I have thought of her and seen a tangible example of hope? It's hard to tell and since I love what I do so much, I honestly don't want to spend too much time thinking about it. What I do know, is that walking to the Police station none of my girls mentioned wanting to go into Public safety or any career for that matter but on the walk back, they all did. 

There is power in thinking about your dream job and being able to recall a memory of people who walk like, talk like and look like you in those positions. There's a confidence that comes and I think in your subconscious a switch is flipped and it tells you that people who look like you have done it and so can you. 

Representation is an essential step in giving young people of color the proper tools to be able to achieve their goals. It's the black president, the first Latina Justice on the Supreme court, it's the African American woman saving NASA and the first Muslim American man winning an Oscar.

It's about giving young adults, both male and female, an image to focus on, one that mirrors who they are and what they can be. One that gives them hope, inspires them to dream and allows them to see themselves serving in any capacity that they wish.

I wish every adult that interacted with our students treated them the way that those cops did. They treated them like they were the future, like they had potential and like our city will be a better place because of each and every one of them. They showed them Officers, Commanders and Directors who looked like them. People who told them that the sky was the limit and I think for the first time in maybe their entire lives, our students could actually see it and without hesitation, believed it.