Veer's arrest (from a novel)
Jun. 4th, 2020 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plutherusSo, I've been going back and forth deciding whether to post this or not. It's an excerpt from my unpublished novel. This isn't to promote it -- that'll be happening separately, and later.
This is a scene, originally written a few years ago, when one of my characters gets arrested. It isn't police brutality, it isn't racist, and it isn't murder, and the character in question isn't Black. That would make a big difference. There are two things going on here with the police - one is the blatant racism where the cops target Black people for special harassment, including frequent assault and murder.
The other dynamic in play is the nature of the police. The ones who do this are, simply, bullies. They have power and they enjoy exercising it. The reason they disproportionately target Black people is that they know they can get away with it, as systemic racism will have their backs. The DA will protect them, their fellow officers will stay silent, or actively help them cover up their crimes, internal investigations will ignore all but the most blatant violations. Cops will also do this kind of thing to anyone they think is an outsider, someone who won't have the resources to fight back, press charges or hold them accountable for their actions. Anybody who the public can say, "Well, they were just a --" fill in stoner, homeless, student, radical, whatever you want there.
Again, this is a fictional account. I'm not sharing this to detract from the larger conversation, but to add perhaps a bit of understanding. Maybe someone will read this and realize oh, that's what it's like, or maybe even somewhere a police officer might gain, even second or third hand, a tiny bit of understanding of what they're doing to the person, and their community at large, whenever they exercise their power like this.
In this scene, the character in question is a journalist, which is why, once she's in the back of the police car, her immediate thought is how to report the incident. This incident is fiction, but the details are all taken from real life and are the sort of thing that happens every single day in this country.
(I've cut out parts where it references the larger plot, as they're irrelevant to my purpose in sharing here. Michael is a homicide detective she'd been working with.)
This is a scene, originally written a few years ago, when one of my characters gets arrested. It isn't police brutality, it isn't racist, and it isn't murder, and the character in question isn't Black. That would make a big difference. There are two things going on here with the police - one is the blatant racism where the cops target Black people for special harassment, including frequent assault and murder.
The other dynamic in play is the nature of the police. The ones who do this are, simply, bullies. They have power and they enjoy exercising it. The reason they disproportionately target Black people is that they know they can get away with it, as systemic racism will have their backs. The DA will protect them, their fellow officers will stay silent, or actively help them cover up their crimes, internal investigations will ignore all but the most blatant violations. Cops will also do this kind of thing to anyone they think is an outsider, someone who won't have the resources to fight back, press charges or hold them accountable for their actions. Anybody who the public can say, "Well, they were just a --" fill in stoner, homeless, student, radical, whatever you want there.
Again, this is a fictional account. I'm not sharing this to detract from the larger conversation, but to add perhaps a bit of understanding. Maybe someone will read this and realize oh, that's what it's like, or maybe even somewhere a police officer might gain, even second or third hand, a tiny bit of understanding of what they're doing to the person, and their community at large, whenever they exercise their power like this.
In this scene, the character in question is a journalist, which is why, once she's in the back of the police car, her immediate thought is how to report the incident. This incident is fiction, but the details are all taken from real life and are the sort of thing that happens every single day in this country.
(I've cut out parts where it references the larger plot, as they're irrelevant to my purpose in sharing here. Michael is a homicide detective she'd been working with.)
She stood up, angrily. “No,” she said, “Unless you're planning to arrest me--” she got no further than that.
Suddenly he was on her, her arm twisted behind her back. [She fell] Her face pressed against the muddy road as the cop used his weight to hold her down. She struggled to catch a breath.
She felt the cold hard metal of the handcuffs bite into her wrist. He was not gentle.
“Hey!” she cried out, as he wrenched her other arm around. She let him.
The man said nothing.
...
The officer was frisking her now, and not being gentle about it, or wholly appropriate. When she pulled away from his touch, he pushed her hands upward, causing the cuffs to bite more painfully into her wrists. Pain shot up her arms.
“Stop it!” she cried. “I’m not resisting arrest!”
He didn’t speak. That was more terrifying than if he’d gloated, or even threatened. She found herself hoping Michael would notice what was happening and intervene. And immediately grew angry at herself for wishing it. She wasn’t some damsel in distress, and he was certainly not her knight in shining armor.
Even if he [had been there], there was no guarantee he’d do anything, or even take her side. For all their recent cooperation, he was police too, after all.
Eventually the man yanked her harshly to her feet and over toward the police car. When he pushed her inside, she let herself fall, just a bit, to thwart his attempt to bang her head into the car’s roof. That earned her another wrenching of her hand-cuffed arms and a sharp kick to the back of her knee. As she fell across the back seat, he grabbed her leg in both hands and twisted it, hard, which forced her the rest of the way into the seat.
He slammed the door behind her, leaving her laying on her side breathing heavily.
At least she was out of the rain.
“He is the kind of man who likes hurting women,” she began to compose the story in her mind. No, make that, “who likes hurting people.” That would appease the more sensitive among her readers and avoid the common misogynistic trolls who liked to derail the comments section of the online article. She’d have to remember every push, squeeze, twist, every indignity and unnecessary extra painful act for later, and catalog them all carefully so it was clear she was merely reporting on them, not complaining or whining. She’d have to stress how unnecessary each was as clearly as she could to avoid the “well why didn’t you just cooperate” responses from the usual authoritarians.
“He didn’t kill anyone,” she continued to compose the article in her mind. “There were not even injuries that were serious enough to require treatment. He was careful. Is this how it begins? ‘I can twist your wrist like this, causing you to shout out in pain.’ And he can get away with it. Nothing can be done there. ‘I can spend an extra couple of seconds squeezing your breast while frisking you,’ and again, no actual injury is done. But the message is clear: ‘I can do anything I want to you and you can’t do anything to stop me.’ And maybe the next person is hurt just a little bit more.
Eventually someone fights back which gives him an excuse to break a wrist or crack a skull and again he gets away with it, as all witnesses will agree the suspect wasn’t complying. He may go his whole career without ever committing outright murder. But every person he hurts, even if there is no reportable injury, and every woman he touches inappropriately, even if there is no prosecutable molestation, is one more hurt, scared, angry person who distrusts the police a little bit more.
Each act drives just a little bit more wedge between the community and the police, makes everyone just a little less cooperative, less willing to deal with the police, less likely to report a crime.
The real question isn’t what can we do to stop him before he really hurts someone. The question is, is this really the kind of man we want in the police force? Is this the face the Portland PD wants to put forth? Is this something that we should even tolerate?
Why do his fellow police support this kind of behavior? Do they believe this kind of power is actually deserved? That it is good and right that they have this kind of power over the rest of us? And what kind of society, and what kind of relationship between the police and the community does that create, and is that really what we want?”
