Dear David, I’ve never really sat down to think about the police (unless what we’re talking about involves Sting and not a sting —rimshot), so I’m glad you forced me to with your writing. 

So like, whenever I talk about how I hate the police, people don’t get it. They write it off as a silly, fringe opinion.

“But they protect us!” they say. 

“If you got shot,”–sassy, what-now-bitch look in tow—“you’d like police officers then, huh?” they say. 

But this hasn’t been my experience. Where I come from, they aren’t heroes. They’re profiling, terrorizing assholes. And just when I start to calm my nuts about it, something else happens to confirm my opinions. (Key word: something else, re: one of many)

Two days ago, I was helping my mom with bee business stuff. She had recently gotten a “Fix It” ticket for not having a business logo with contact info and a CA number on one of her relatively new work trucks. We had procrastinated on that and it bit us in the ass, whatever. It was warranted. 

So we get the logo put on two days ago. And to have the “Fix It” ticket fine go from 300-and-something dollars to just 50 dollars, you have to have a “peace officer” sign off on the citation after verifying that the infractions have been corrected. My mother, not wanting to go to the nearest CHP location because it’s too far away, decides to go to our local police department. 

So we go. Three of us.  Me, my mom, and my mom’s part-time worker, who had to come because my mom and I don’t know how to drive stick shift. We get there, we have to pay 10 dollars, whatever. Then an officer finally gets out to the alley where we had parked the truck. And this is where shit gets cray.

My mom’s worker is standing by the truck, waiting casually. He has nothing to do with any of this. My mom had been issued the ticket because she owned the truck. He, at that moment, was irrelevant and should have been of no interest to anyone. But he was. Obviously. 

The officer—who is white, of course—takes a good look at my mom’s worker—who is Mexican, of course—and asks, very aggressively if he was the driver. And I reply that yes, he was, but that my mom was issued the ticket because it was a non-driving infraction. But he wasn’t interested. He had forgotten about what we had paid 10 dollars for him to do. Instead he keeps looking at my mom’s worker suspiciously.

“Where do you live?” And as I translate the question for both my mom and my mom’s worker, the officer gets impatient and asks him again, more agitated. Then when my mom’s worker is telling me the name of the street and I’m about to tell it to the officer, he has reached mad-impatience with the translating and obnoxiously goads him with annoyed “¿Donde vives?”es.

I tell him the name of the street, but the officer’s moved on to the next step and demands the guy’s license. I translate and he gives the cop his license. The cop walkie-talkies it in for a warrant check. As he waits for my mom’s worker’s status, he asks him if he has any brothers. At this point, my mom’s worker is deeply confused and uncomfortable. He responds that yes, he has three. The cop wants to know the names of his brothers. But he doesn’t actually. Because as I am telling the cop the names, he interrupts me impatiently again.

“Is (so and so, Mexican name) your brother?” We respond that no, he isn’t, he’s his neighbor. The officer looks skeptical. He finally gets a response from the other end of the walkie-talkie and he says that everything’s clean and gives him back his license. 

THEN he finally does the ticket shit, and I walk back to the police station with him to get a receipt. I guess he notices how fucking puzzled I am. And he responds. 

“He looks a lot like his neighbor. His neighbor has a warrant out for his arrest.” I can’t know for sure, but if I were a betting man, I’d say that the only thing my mom’s worker has in common with his neighbor is that they both vaguely look like they don’t speak English. I just nod my head. “Also, I arrested his (my mom’s worker’s) son last year. He’s in prison.” 

Okay so wait. He had clearly run into my mom’s worker before. He had arrested his son. He knew his face. And on the way home, my mom’s worker tells us of another time he had to deal with this officer. And I mean that was bias incident unto itself, but whatever.  

Point is, this officer has seen and dealt with my mom’s worker on several occasions. He definitely knows who he is. So why ask for his license? Why assume he’s a criminal? Or the fucking BROTHER of a criminal? Just because he’s seen them in the same neighborhood and they “look a lot alike”? Maybe he was bored. Maybe he thought he might as well check for good measure. He lives in that bad neighborhood, y’know, and he looks Mexican sketchy enough. With any luck, he’ll have a warrant out for his arrest too! All in a day’s work!

I mean, it just should not have happened. Bottom line. The police officer’s business was the ticket, a non-driving infraction. My mom. Not her worker because “he looked a lot like his neighbor.”

So some people might be like, “But David, that was just one police officer. Not all of them are racist!” And I mean, like, sure, sure, whatever, I get what you’re trying to say. But when a police force is made up of mostly white people, in a town that is run by mostly white people, for the benefit of white people, in a country where TV, movies, and other media showcase mostly white people, and then this happens, hell fucking YES it is racist. Not every single policeman, not every single person who runs this town, the media, the country is individually prejudiced, which is what you mean to say. But they are all part of the power structures which make up an institutional, systemic racism.

So the reason why I don’t like police officers is because they are the most obvious agents of those power structures, of that systemic racism. Obvious because they have the power to ask for your license just because you look “sketchy” or “threatening” or, let’s be real, Mexican. 

And for anyone out there who still insists that this was just an isolated incident and not indicative of a much larger, systemic racism, fuck you. You guys will never get it.

•  13 January 2012