Fuck the police comin straight from the underground
A young nigga got it bad cause I'm brown
And not the other color so police think
they have the authority to kill a minority
Fuck that shit, cause I ain't the one
for a punk motherfucker with a badge and a gun
to be beatin on, and thrown in jail
We can go toe to toe in the middle of a cell
Ice Cube (Fuck tha Police)
I got an email on Friday from my boy Juan. He lives in the Bronx. He told me that the cops who had killed Sean Bell, the young brutha who was gunned down in a hail of 50 bullets despite the fact that he was unarmed, were acquitted. What? Are you kiddin me? How could that happen?
It brought me back to my thoughts and memories of run-ins with cops over my lifetime. I thought about a blog that LRenee did about police, racial profiling, driving while black, etc. I will share my post from that day.
Let me start by saying that I don't like cops. I hate to generalize it but I don't like em. I don't feel safe around them, they've never been around when I've needed them, and I haven't met one nice cop. That said...here's my story
I was in New Orleans about 10 years ago on a business trip. My co-worker and I decided to go to Bourbon Street. If you've ever been to N.O. you know that ANYTHING goes on Bourbon Street. We hung out and had a good time and then decided to head back to our hotel. Before we got in the car, my co-worker, who is white, was complaining about his feet that were sore from walking. When we got in the car, he decides to take his shoes off to "rest his dogs." As he was bending over to remove his shoes, I see a police car behind us that throws on the blue lights. We were only a block away from Bourbon Street and we weren't drunk so I dunno why we were being pulled over. The cops get out with their GUNS DRAWN!!! They are yelling at us to get outta the car. They make us stand in front of the running car with our hands on the hood of the car. Apparently, there must be some law about a young black dude and a white dude hangin together...because they thought we had drugs on us. They asked my co-worker why was he bending over...was he trying to hide some drugs? Drugs? You could get ANY drug that you wanted just a block away on Bourbon Street!!!
When my co-worker advised him that he was removing his shoe (as evidence he pointed to his untied shoes), they threatened us. It was a black cop and a white cop. The black cop said "why are you two together?" We explained but the didn't listen. They proceeded to search my car (illegally). We asked could we take our hands off the HOT hood of the car. The black cop said "No. And you better not run. If you move, I'll put a bullet in your back!!" I couldn't believe it. I looked at the white cop and he was cool. He was the one who called off the black cop from going through my trunk and suitcase. My co-worker and I gathered our composure and got back in the car. We were furious and stunned!! We just sat there for about 5 mins before we left. We drove up the street and the SAME cops had pulled over a car full of Mexicans. Wow! I wonder what rule did they break? F@#% the police!
Please feel free to share any experiences that you've had with cops aka pigs aka po-po aka 1 time aka jake aka charlie...etc. You get my point
Holla atcha boi
That story is terrible; I'm sorry that happened to you.
ReplyDeleteMe- I've never had a run-in with cops. In fact, I lived up the street from a precinct (the 79th) in BK as a kid and interacted with officers all the time at the local pizza shop. They were always friendly and courteous to me.
Even today, when I see a cop on the subway or on the street- we exchange pleasantries; I've never gotten any attititude from an officer.
I know they are considered the devil here in NYC and in LA and pretty much any city with a high concentration of people of color, and I know they are corrupt beyond belief, but personally- cops have never done me or mine wrong.
*knocks on wood*
wow thats deep, cops round her would never do that, they accually respect you, talk about taking your power to far
ReplyDeletei can understand why you guys hate them so much,
"what are you guys doing together"
wtf was that suposed to mean.
oh yh, ive never really had any encounter with the police b4,.
ReplyDeleteWow, that is a sad situation.
ReplyDeleteI can't say I dislike cops, my brother is a cop, but things are very different here.
you will hear a case or two of harrasment every once in a while but not to that extreme.
Sorry You had to go through all that.
Driving back from Florida me and my ex and the little one got stopped for no reason. When we asked why the cop said, you were driving to close. We drove another mile and got stopped again, this time 2 police cars. ONCE AGAIN no legitimate reason for the stop, but they asked us if they could search the car. I was furious, and i was complaining the whole time, but my ex asked me to hold it down...they searched the car, the trunk and even brought the drug dog to sniff us out. NO tickets, no citations, just DRIVING WHILE BLACK!
ReplyDeleteToday - i more scared for my son and police than myself...really scared.
@ Jaded NYer
ReplyDeleteI feel you. I think it's different when you can interact. I think if I did that growing up, then I might feel a lil different.
@ F&F - Fresh And Fab
They asked why were we together b/c they don't think that a young brutha and a young white dude were supposed to be hangin together. The also figured that if we WERE hangin, then there MUST be drugs involved.
@ Tabu
Yeah. It's a lil different up there. I really don't like to generalize b/c people like your brother are probably good cops. I just haven't had any good experiences with them.
@ Miz
Wow!! That is crazy. I agree with your ex, tho. You don't wanna esculate the situation by arguing. I know you were pissed.
I remember being pulled over on the I-20 in some small county. I was DWB. I had my baseball cap on backwards but I wasn't speeding. The dude pulled me over and asked if he could search my car. He was polite but that's not the point. He had no reason to pull me over.
I worry about my boys, too. Hopefully, my experiences will help them deal with a situation should it present itself.
I have been very conflicted since I heard the verdict on friday. I knew I couldn't go off all half cocked because my brother in law is a cop, but I was saddened by the verdict because this could have been any black man (including my own husband and son).
ReplyDeleteI've had a run in with the cops when I was about 15 or so. It was a saturday morning and I had just walked my friend to the bus stop so she could go home. I had on baggy sweats, a t-shirt and a cross colors hat. After my friend got on the bus I started to walk back and a blue and white pulled up in front of me. I kept walking until the black cop asked me to turn around and take off my hat. I didnt and he got out of the car. AT that moment the white cop told him leave her alone, we thought you were a guy. I wrote down the badge number and car number and went home got dressed and my mom took me to the precinct to file a complaint.
In this particular case it was over before the case even started, the prosecution did an awful job and the judge made note of it. He also should have removed himself from the case because he already held a bias from reviewing their record. I told my husband I don't care if Sean Bell was a drug dealer, pimp and whatever else he could have been he didnt deserve to die. And I think people are losing sight of that, a man is dead. He will never see his children, wife, mother again.
Wow @ your story...but truthfully I'm not surprised.
ReplyDeleteI once saw the police pull over this young dude in a really nice ride. He was young, cocky and pissed about being pulled over. In under sixty seconds the cops had him on the ground, face down, laying on the asphalt while they searched his car. They found NOTHING.
People were stopping their cars...just standing around. I know I was standing there to see if they were going to beat the kid up since at the time Mayor Guiliani was in office and police were on this rampage to be Billy bad asses.
Those cops let all of us bystanders know that if we didn't want to get arrested that day, then we'd better keep it moving. The crowd slowly dispersed (including me). Wonder what happened to that kid.
I remember when I was about 15 I was walking to the bodega to get me a ham and cheese hero. And it was gonna be good too cause I had the quarter for extra cheese. Anyway (got lost for a minute) as I'm going into the store I see the police have a guy pulled over and the have him on the ground trying to cuff him. He's resisting a little so they start punching and kicking him. Well, I go in the store and get my sammich (with the extra cheese) and on the way out I see the samd dude that they were beating runs right past me. Close enough for me to have tripped him. Well 10 minutes later I hear MAAAD sirens and ghetto birds overhead. Come to find out when they caught up to do....in somebody's backyard they pumped 8 rounds into him. They said he had a GUN. But if you would have seen how they were hitting him....they had plenty of time to frisk and disarm him if that was the case. I immediately thought they planted the gun.
ReplyDeleteThey let me try on my first pair of silver bracelets at the age of 14. They let me slide on a ticket or two when I would travel up and down the road on breaks while in college. They slapped me with several citations for improper speed, improper seating restraint, rolling stops and a car accident when the FOOL in front of me didnt signal before he turned into the lot of a bar around 4 one afternoon; so I bumped his 4x4 truck from behind. My Odyssey suffered front end damage and the air bag released; but I got the damn ticket. Finally, I had my most recent run-in with one 'military' like officer of 20+ years when I was invited to take the necessary exams to be accepted into the police academy.
ReplyDeleteBut, I'll be damn if my blog bud hate the fuckin 'fuzz' aka coppers aka 5-0. Don't hold it against me, bruh. LMAO
Many years ago, I was going on a date with a guy. He had come by my house to pick me up. He had a PHAT lexus. I get in the car and we had just left my street and turned the corner no more than a block away from my house this cop stops us for no apparent reason than to walk up to the car and question us about nothing and wanted to search the car and trunk. We had done nothing wrong, made no illegal turns, no speeding, nothing.. he ended up letting us go, when I made a fuss about this being illegal and I asked for his badge #.
ReplyDeleteWell, I ended up getting my local NAACP involved with this incident because this was a local cop that had no business doing what he was doing and I felt it discrimination, that he stopped us because we were two black people in a really nice lexus. The seargeant had a meeting with all of us and made an apology.
Now many years later, I own a PHAT lexus and I am often approached by cops suddenly rolling up close next to my car to look into my tinted windows. They end up not bothering me when I roll down my window and they see that I am a well dressed female.
I am however convinced if I was a black dude they would surely pull me over just because Im driving a lexus. I think black males get harrassed way more than black females.
damn 12kyle. i see you also have experienced the serve and protect policy of the boys in blue.
ReplyDeletemy troubles with police are well-documented. like you, i have never met a police who was a good cop. i have met a federal agent (white boy @ that) who treated me like a human being.
the sean bell case is tragic. think about how many others suffered the same fate as bell did. this world is over. trust.
my bad.
ReplyDeletei said that to say that there will always be the criminal element, the police element, and the oppurtunity for there to be no understanding whatsoever between the two. and since the judicial system is a young black male's worst enemy, as well as a relative of crooked cops alike...
there will never be peace.
I can't say that I have ever had anything like this happen to me and I thank God, I also pray to that same God that it doesn't happen to my children.
ReplyDeleteMy sister has, however, witnessed our father being taken to jail.
I've never personally had any run-ins with the police but my brother has. He was driving somewhere down south, I think he said it was through Tennessee and he said that some cops pulled him and his friend over on a Friday evening for "speeding" and kept him in a jail cell till Monday morning. He said it was a little hick town with not a black person in sight and so he just had to play it cool, just for fear that he didn't know what might happen otherwise!!
ReplyDeleteSuch a horrible experience. I was angry just hearing about it.
sorry this happened to you kylie.
ReplyDeletewhen i lived in TX i had a cop get up in my face and ask me fuckery. this bitch that ran my apt complex called 5-0 and told them that my friends and i were "disturbing the peace".
when he asked me where i lived, i naturally gave a smart-alik reply. being fresh outta new york in this foreign land called Texas, i simply could not help myself. i knew it was cuz we were black. we even had a white friend chillaxin with us and he didnt get harassed.
go figure.
-KB
What a terrible and scary encounter. So many police officers are terrorists in our communities. Instead of busting the thugs who are really selling drugs, they go after the upstanding college student who's home for the summer, etc. It really saddens me to hear about all of the injustices that we face, strictly based on our skin tone. The Sean Bell case was just mind-boggling. How could they simply get away with it?
ReplyDeleteI also want to add, that sometimes the black cops are worse than the white ones, like in your experience. It reminded me of that part in Boyz in the Hood.
thankfully, i've only had one run-in with the po-po...back when i was drivin' a not-so-nice vehicle and happened to be in an all-white neighborhood. i know that black and brown MEN have it so much worse when it comes to dealings with the pigs. either way, call me a whore, but i ALWAYS flirt with cops when they pull me over. male or female, i give a DAMN! believe me when i say it's worked magic on more than one occasion.
ReplyDeleteHey 12Kyle,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the shout out! (smile)
Well, you know how I feel about them. They remind me of sharks circling around until they attack some unsuspecting target. I was very upset about the Sean Bell verdict. Unfortunately, somebody on the jury wasn't convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt. What a tragedy!
Oh my goodness. That situation could have ended up tragically. I know you were pissed and probably scared too. I'm glad you were able to get out of that situation because of the white cop. Sadly, some of our own that are in uniform abuse the authority that comes with the uniform.
ReplyDelete12Kyle, that is insane that both you and your friend had to go through something so unnecessary.
ReplyDeleteI can recall one incident where my family and I had a run in with the police. My mother, little sister, and I were shopping in a department store. My mother is white so a lot of people automatically assumed that my little sister was my daughter when the three of us are together. My little sister had stressed my mother out to the point that my mother was very upset and told my little sister not to follow her anymore. Apparently a very nosy employee of the store called the police who came and for a good while, I didn't notice them. It wasn't until my little sister asked me "Hey, are they following us?" that I noticed the cop was following us. I stopped, made eye contact with the cop who took that as an invitation to approach me and ask me what my "daughter and I" were doing. I told him that I was here shopping with my LITTLE SISTER and my MOTHER. This idiot (a white cop) proceeded to tell me that I didn't need to lie and that I wasn't with my sister or my mother, but hounding a shopper. He asked (demanded) to see my identification and insisted that I leave the store before he placed me under arrest for trespassing! I said "Excuse me??? How are you going to tell me who is or isn't my family?" I yelled out to my mother who immediately came over and asked what was wrong. The cop, with a look of surprise, asked if I was in fact her daugther and if the little girl was my sister. Without hesitation, she responded yes. The cop who still had my ID, proceeded to ask my mother what my name, birthday, and address were for verification! After she verified those things he handed me my ID back and told MY MOTHER to have a good day and had the nerve to turn to me and say "stay out of trouble" before he walked away. No apology. I was beyond heated.
The only "good" cops I've met are family members. I wouldn't trust a cop anymore than I would trust R. Kelly with my 13 year-old daughter.
U know ...
ReplyDelete1) i've been avoiding these s.bell stories cuz they're PISSIn' ME OFF...
2) i don't wish harm on ANYone - but when i read about cops who've been shot i rarely feel bad cuz i know so many crooked officers...
3) why am i like the cop MAGNET? they LOVE ME! And quiet as it's kept I find that confidence sexy & scary all at the same time... i've dated a coupla cops in my yout' - and their fascination with guns & power always scare de hell outta me - so, i can't do it anymore ...
can't say they've ever treated me HARSHLY - rudely maybe - but tha's a blessing...
now, i find i interact with them like u do a very temperamental dog ... smile & don't make any sudden moves...nice, officer, there, there...
*my bad for posting in your comment section - but u started it...LOL!
oh! one more thing after reading comments - when i saw the movie Crash & the couple got pulled over and the chick started going ballistic - I kept screaming in my head: "Why doesn't she SHUT UP?! Doesn't EVERY Black woman KNOW that agitation will only get her MAN the BEAT down?"
ReplyDeleteSistahs PLEEEEZE be cognizant of your/OUR men when u get stopped by police together. A dude was just tryin' to holla at me once & these cops harassed him for "being double parked"...i HAD to give him my number then just for GP...couldn't let the cops see a brother's rap get shot down...even if he wasn't my type (luckily, he didn't really pursue anything with me - just called & talked a few times;-).
ok - i'm done, now. lol!
@ The F$%K it List
ReplyDeleteI think some people has lost sight of the fact that Sean Bell is dead. He's never coming back. And that's the sad part.
@ OD
Hopefully, that kid was able to get away from that situation and file a report
@ Brad
DAMN!!!
@ PRO
"They let me try on my first pair of silver bracelets at the age of 14"
LOL. Still hard for me to imagine ole PRO being locked up.
@ Trish
I feel you. But it SHOULDN'T have to be that way. You should be able to ride without being harassed. No matter your attire.
@ Don
The boys in blue aint no friend to me and you. LOL
@ Queen
I'm glad that you haven't been in this situation. Hopefully, you never will
@ Jackie Edwards
Yeah. You have to be careful in those little towns. They don't play.
@ karrie b
Wow!! That's crazy
@ prettyblack
Black cops can sometimes be the WORST!!
@ BGG
"So many police officers are terrorists in our communities."
Sooooooooo true!!
@ L
If I get a female cop...maybe I should flirt. But I can't flirt with no dude. LOL. I feel you, tho. Glad that you've never been down this road before.
@ LRenee
No problem. You know I got ya back
@ sheila
Yeah. I'm glad that we were cool about it. We were just numb when it was over.
@ Mika
That is crazy. How do you put somebody through all of that? Then you have the nerve to tell them to stay outta trouble? Gimme a break!
@ CapCity
You are off the chain. Verrrry funny
12kyle, I KNOW how it feels to suffer the indignity of DWB. I'm a female and I got pulled over while driving towards Florence by a really old, really good old boy cracked and wrinkled face sheriff. The dude had me for going 7mph over the speed limit. 7mph... He asked me what I did for a living (as if that was any of his biz...) and then gave me a verbal bashing/interrogation for thinking I was so smart (because I drove .5 miles to the next exit instead of STOPPING as soon as he threw the lights on) and he could haul my @$$ to jail "right now" and see how such a "smartie" could get outta that one... The poor unlucky "new kid on the block" (also white) that was assigned to be his road partner looked like he was so embarrassed to be seen with him. At some point in time, I stopped answering his questions because it seemed that my education, ability to secure a job; no, scratch that, CAREER, and a decent sense of fashion and style is what was driving him over the edge. I could tell that infuriated him even more but I...felt... helpless... and I refused to give him the SATISFACTION of breaking me down so he would have braggin rights with his boys when they met under the old oak tree at Jeb's Plantation...
ReplyDelete@ 12kyle fan
ReplyDeleteHow is it that YOU of all people get pulled over in MY hometown. Why didn't you tell them that you knew me. LOL
Seriously, that's real sad. Although I've never had any problems with the cops at the crib, nobody should be questioned like a criminal