WHAT WENT THROUGH MY MIND WHEN I WAS PULLED OVER
Friday is my market day and I absolutely love it. Walmart is my preferred shopping destination, and I’m always prepped to go, with grocery bags ready, pencil and list in my pocket. I use the same route every time because I know it quite well and it’s the quickest way to get there from my house. I anticipate immersing myself in this real slice of Americana, but one day last August turned out to be anything but my normal grocery run. I just didn’t know it at the time.
I was heading west on Oceanside Boulevard keeping pace with traffic. One hundred or so yards ahead of me on an incline, I spotted a police officer on a motorcycle. I saw him, but he didn’t see me because he was looking in a different direction. My immediate inclination was to slow down. I was roughly two blocks from my turn and merged into the turning lane. The cop pulled up behind me. After the light changes, I proceeded to drive, and the motorcycle flashers went on. I could not fathom a reason why this was happening.
We were on a pretty desolate stretch of road, so I began to look, with a minimum amount of movement, for security cameras in case this interaction went bad. He asked me if I knew the speed limit. I said, “No, officer, I was just moving along with the flow of traffic.” He replied, “It was 45, and I clocked you doing 59.” In my head, I was having another conversation with myself.
Clocked me? How? He didn’t have a visible radar gun! Every rational fiber of my being was screaming, he’s lying!
I decided to do everything I could to decrease my chances of becoming the lead story on the 6 o’clock news. I did not want the last image people would remember of me to be an undignified silhouette of my body lying under a sheet. We all know the track record on traffic stops between African American men and police in this country. They oftentimes devolve into aberrantly destructive, deadly and violent situations over what should be a perfunctory exchange concerning a minor traffic violation.
The cop asked for my
He said he clocked me as going above the speed limit. How? He didn’t have a visible radar gun! Every rational fiber of my being was screaming, he’s lying!
credentials. I politely replied, “They are in my glove compartment, can I get them?” He said, “Yes.”
I asked permission to search for my paperwork because the many Black men featured on newscasts who are shot while supposedly reaching for some “phantom” weapon that never materializes after the incident is over. He gave me a ticket and the obligatory, “Have a nice day.”
During this entire encounter the cop was super polite. The cognitive dissonance on how his demeanor could be so jovial while inflicting such distress on another human being was striking. Other than the fact that this stop was predicated on a complete fabrication, it was a textbook example of how all traffic stops should go.
During an interview, President Bill Clinton was asked why he had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He famously replied, “I think I did something for the worst possible reason — just because I could. I think that’s the most, just about the most morally indefensible reason that anybody could have for doing anything.”
It’s his response, because he could, that troubled me. I interpreted that part of his answer as denoting that because of his position of power, he knew he could get away with it. It wasn’t about the thrill of the sex. It was about the thrill of “abusing” that power.
Inmates do it. Teachers do it. Presidents do it. And, most certainly, cops do it.
When you factor in that police are given almost unlimited trust, discretion and immunity to take a life for the flimsiest of reasons, it becomes abundantly clear that there is an extreme lapse of societal judgment and accountability from our government for the safety of its own citizens.
We are at an inflection point when it comes to policing and the deadly abuse of power in communities of color. We need to come to a level of acceptance and admit that a darker side of human nature exists. Monsters are indeed among us. There’s a systemic rot, a proven moral decay — along with abject racism — when it comes to law enforcement’s brutality and misconduct when interacting with minorities in this country. And therein lies our dilemma.
We are victims of our own gullibility, “accomplices” to the very people who egregiously violate the sacred social contract we bestow upon them.
We have fallen into a collective state of denial, offering up meandering excuses not to believe our own “lying eyes,” blaming the victim for resisting arrest to justify extrajudicial summary executions by cops. It is a complete insult to common sense and basic human decency.
No one in a “free” society should have to worry if he or she will get out of a traffic stop alive.
Harding is a retired Marine and a retired high school teacher who lives in Oceanside.