The officer was parked one house away from my own as I pulled up. I drove by, noticing him as I pulled into my own driveway. I knew him. Not a good sort of ‘know’ either. This was the man who’d pulled me over and basically read me the riot act (hand on sidearm) for changing lanes too close to the vehicle in front of me. Now it was my turn to approach him. See, he wasn’t the first officer I’d seen on my block recently. They’ve been on the block a lot lately–every week there is a cop sitting by. A lot of it stems from some domestic issues across from my home but the rest is pure mystery. I decided it was time to unravel the mystery.
I walked up to the officer, approaching him from the front, hands open and palms upturned. The irony of possibly being shot by a black cop for no reason whatsoever was not lost on me. He didn’t react at all to my approach, choosing to ignore me and continue the paperwork her was diligently scribbling out. I said hello and asked him what was going on. He blew me off. I asked him if there was an issue in the neighborhood and he finally said that he was writing a parking ticket and if there was an issue he’d evacuate the neighborhood.
That sat in my heart for days until I listned to a Ted talk from Melvin Russell, a former Baltimore police officer. Russell believes police have really stopped being a part of the community and become occupiers in the community. They’ve focused on the protect and forgotten the serve part of the oath. He doesn’t think it is all on the cops. He says, “we have surrendered so much of our responsibility to the police” that it creates that occupier mentality.
I feel like this is a real thing, and is a problem on both sides of the blue wall. The idea that an officer would evacuate my area is better suited for wartime Iraq than small town Maricopa. Yet, here we are.
The only question left is what do we want to do about it?