When I was 19, I was driving home erratically, crying. I did a rolling stop through a red light. I was a mile away from my house. I got pulled over…
He drug me out of the open car window and onto the ground. He kicked me in the ribs. He fractured my wrist cuffing me and picking me up by the link between the cuffs. He held his boot to the back of my head with my face on loose gravel, leaving what would later become scars. He bounced my head off the side of the car when he was putting me in, all while laughing…
Do you know what I was arrested for and charged with that day? Resisting arrest…
Fast forward to the jail. I’d never been in trouble. Had no idea what to expect. I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t breathe. I told them he’d broken my wrist but they wouldn’t believe me. They strapped me in a chair when I wouldn’t calm down. Strap on your forehead. Strap on your chest. Strap on each arm and each leg. Like a beast. I remember begging for someone to scratch my nose, hysterically sobbing. I remember being in that chair for hours, topless, because I’d gotten “unruly” during the strip, cough, and squat procedure and refused to do it. So they ripped my shirt off and as I fought them, they put me in the chair. I tried to fight back against a female guard when she tried to rip my pants off. I didn’t understand why I was there. I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t think I should have been arrested. I was livid. And loud.
Then they parked me. For five hours. In that chair. Strapped down. In front of a men’s holding cell. I was literally losing my mind. It was a black man who, for five hours, while incarcerated himself, talked calmly and softly to me. Sang to me. Said every kind thing you could imagine. I finally stopped screaming and trying to head butt or kick anyone who passed. He said, “Stop, or they’ll kill you. Just stop baby girl. It’s ok. You’ll be ok if you stop.” He was an angel…
A week later police in the same town shot an unarmed and senile very elderly black man in the face because he wouldn’t come with them. There were no videos. There was no social media. You haven’t heard about him. But he’s dead. You won’t hear his story.
This arrest is still on my record. It doesn’t prevent me from anything but I do have to explain felony charges when I get pulled over or apply for a job.
I have never publicly told this story.
I tell it to you, today.
And here’s why:
If I were a black man, I would be dead. Plain and simple. Pretty white girls don’t get shot during wrongful arrests…
Of course they riot. What else are they supposed to do? Watch their brothers, fathers, husbands get gunned down in complacent silence? How many stories have we not heard because there is no tape? How many more deaths are there?
How do we protect our brothers and sisters of color? What can we do? We need to move. We need to make something happen. This is unacceptable.
#blacklivesmatter
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All Things Chronic 