My arms didn't work like I wanted them too. I was begging my hands to rise into the air submissively but they refused. They were arguing that if I threw my arms into the air too quickly that the cop would get spooked and shoot me dead. They might have been right---the cop looked that scared. At any rate my hands stayed put, holding onto the door and roof of my car.
The cop shouted FREEZE! again, and since I was already frozen this confused both me and my hands. I started to shake all over, wanted to speak, to tell the cop I meant him no harm, but no words would not come out of my mouth, which was suddenly shot through with both the taste of burning metal and the feeling of being stuffed with wads of dirty cotton.
After about 20-30 seconds, which seemed like an eternity both to me and I'm sure the cop, I found my voice and managed to make a plaintive sound that said, "I'm a paperboy. I'm delivering papers."
It was 5am, pitch black dark still, and the cop had just pulled me over after I banged my Chevy Nova around a corner, headed for the next run of throws. I guess he hadn't seen the papers flying out of my windows on the previous block, because when he pulled me over he immediately went for his gun.
I'm sure I looked wrong---this was the mid 70's and I had hair down to my waist and was wearing a pilot's flight suit, as it was winter and it was the first thing I grabbed daily when I awoke to throw my morning route.
The cop's gun hand began to shake and tremble and I worried that he was going to a accidentally pull the trigger so again I informed him that I was a paperboy, and this time managed to sound a little more convincing.
He inched closer to me, then shouted for me to slowly put my hands on the roof of the car. My arms managed to cooperate better and at that point the cop rushed forward, frisked me, slapped a pair of handcuffs on me, then threw me in the back of his cruiser.
A moment later a swarm of cop cars descended from all directions. Blue light convention. Uniforms and plain clothes, even a few detectives. They were rifling through my car and seemed amused. They were showing each other the neatly folded newspapers. I finally caught a snippet of what the lead detective was saying to the cop with the gun, the one who'd pulled me over. "Good work." he smirked, "You caught a goddamn paperboy."
With that the swarm of cops departed, leaving me and the cop with the gun alone there. He opened the door to the cruiser, helped me out, unlocked the handcuffs and apologized. He explained that the night before a cop had been shot in a neighboring city and my car matched the description of the car involved. He'd seen me driving erratically (I used to drive with my knees while I threw papers out both windows) and thought he'd found the shooter. When he pulled me over and I innocently started to get out of my car to see what the problem was he got spooked and drew his weapon.
He said that each night before leaving for work his wife would make him promise to not come home dead. He'd made that promise to her that night and intended to keep it. With that he shook my hand and wished me well.
It took me days to get my head back on straight. I got flushed with nausea at the drop of a pin---post traumatic stress related I'm sure. I was eighteen years old, the same age as Michael Brown.
We all run these narratives in our minds about how we'll behave in moments of duress, but those narratives are the stuff of fantasy. When the gun is pointed at your chest you don't behave rationally, your body disobeys simple commands and that leads to some real problems, which is why drawing guns should be a last resort, not the first.
Thinking about Ferguson, it occurs to me that if my skin were not the same color as the cops, I might not be here today. I was white, as was he, so he held back and reserved judgment. Had I been black maybe things would not have worked out so well for me. So I guess I'm thankful for that, but it's little consolation.
Jim White
No comments:
Post a Comment