It's The Racism. And More.

[Celerity]

I was arrested and thrown in jail for a supposedly suspended driving license. The police in America are completely out of control.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/its-the-racism-and-more



Late one afternoon in February 2006 I was driving south on Broadway in Manhattan when a patrol car got behind my 12-year-old gray Saturn and flashed its lights. I pulled over and watched a lone NYPD officer emerge from the patrol car and approach. I couldn’t fathom what I had done to deserve this. I wasn’t speeding—either a minute earlier or virtually ever. I hadn’t run a red light or performed a bold maneuver. All I had done was spend the afternoon inspecting pronounced structural problems in the Washington Heights building where an old friend was looking to buy an apartment. My work was pro bono. No good deed went unpunished.

Sir, I need to see your license and registration.

Absolutely. Can I ask why I was pulled over?

Failure to signal.

Knowing the tragic fate of many drivers applying sudden movement I reached into my pocket gingerly for my wallet and then in slow show-and-tell motion for the glove compartment. I thought about my lane change, which occurred only after the patrol car had signaled for me to pull over. It was a long two or three minutes waiting nearly motionless in my car while the cops ran my license, which I knew was clean. I would have to deal with a moving violation and decided I would probably fight it because of the points. Then, through the rear view mirror I saw four doors corresponding to two patrol cars open simultaneously. Four officers with steroid torsos, flak jackets and Glocks were marching toward my Saturn. A minute later I was leaning against the side of my car, being cuffed and read my rights. Reflecting on every arrest horror story I had ever heard or read about I was cooperative as could be and uncannily polite to boot. Nonetheless a large crowd had gathered at the intersection of West 140th and Broadway to watch the spectacle.

I was uncuffed and fingerprinted at the 30th Precinct and led into a dank cell about 8 by 10 feet. Two of the officers had taken my keys and my car while I sat in the back of a patrol car where one of the other officers asked if I knew I was driving with a suspended license. That was impossible, I said. No, they said, I had never paid a ticket 13 years earlier in 1993. Now as the steel bars clang shut a foot from my face, the air left my lungs the way it probably should have a half hour earlier during the arrest. I was in jail. It was real. I was completely powerless and every good thing I had done for another human being these last 43 years meant absolutely nothing. For a couple of hours conditions were bearable. My cellmate was a Columbia University adjunct professor who had been pulled over and then arrested after police found in his glove compartment a white powder he claimed was his mother’s prescription medication, because after all it was her car. Appealing several times to on-duty officers within shouting distance of the cell, I was striking out. I couldn’t arrange my proverbial one phone call or a short meeting with a urinal. However, my arresting officer visited me briefly from the other side of the bars to ask why I had a pickaxe and a shovel in the trunk of my Saturn. I’m an engineer. Sometimes I have to dig a test pit. The professor and I resumed our conversation about the increasingly aggressive tactics of the NYPD we had heard about and were now living.

Soon I would have to live it alone. My friend was pulled from the cell to be charged with drug possession and then relocated to a facility downtown. Things went downhill from there. One by one and two by two I acquired new cellmates, invariably rough-edged men in their 20s waiting to be charged with drug possession. My mobile phone had been confiscated by the police and there was no wall clock visible from the holding cell, but by what I estimated was 11 PM, there were 10 of us altogether in a room a little larger than a freight elevator. There were no seats. The cell stank of old urine, in contrast to the fresh urine I wanted to release more with every passing minute. One of the cops checking in explained that legally I needed my arresting officer to take me to the bathroom, but now he was nowhere to be found. My cellmates were unruly and bursting with testosterone. It was fuck this and fuck that and fuck you motherfucker and I knew my survival depended largely on my continuing ability to sit tightly wrapped on the floor and avoid eye contact. But now, because I had looked up for an instant while adjusting a leg that was falling asleep I did indeed stumble into a nanosecond of eye contact with the worst of the crew—a dude who had already threatened at least three of our cellmates and had, through steel bars, taunted an officer who promised if he had to open the cell door it would be the last thing this dude ever experienced. And now this dude had me in his sights.

What the fuck you looking at, you mother-motherfucker?

Nothing. I looked right back down at the floor.

Yeah, you fucking right nothing. That’s fucking right.

The pressure on my bladder increased........................

snip

[bobbieinok]

1. Worthwhile read. Would like to read rest. That only available to paying subscribers

[I_UndergroundPanther]

2. Fucking paywall