A friend and I were talking about law enforcement the other day.
“How many times have you been stopped and searched by the police?” J. asked. We’re about the same age.
“None, at least not since college,” I said. “What about you?”
“Four times,” he said.
He happens to be black, well educated and prominent in his community.
He then went on to recount in explicit detail four stories, each remarkably similar. Despite occurring decades ago, the memories are still vivid, still raw. In each case he was only guilty of — or so the officer who stopped him said — driving “carelessly,” or in one case, his driving appeared to be “unsteady.”
He figures his only transgression was driving while black.
In each case, he said “no” to the arresting officer’s request to search his vehicle. And in each case the officer told him to get out of the car and then proceeded to search the car.
In two instances, officers bellowed, “SHUT THE F _ _ _ UP” when he challenged their actions. In one of those stops he had young children in the car.
In none of the four cases did he receive a citation. Two of the places he was driving, Florida and California, if you’re black or Hispanic and you’re driving carefully and within the speed limit, you match the profile of a drug courier.
Friday evening at dinner I was recounting the above to Beth, and she reminded me of two nightmarish episodes she’s had on the highways. The first was when she was a school teacher living outside New Orleans.
She was pulled over south of Hattiesburg by two non-uniformed officers in an unmarked car. They showed her their badges, told her to get out of the car, then tore her car apart looking for non-existent drugs. The experience was harrowing — a dark road, a single woman and two rogue cops. She was still unnerved when she reached Slidell and called her mother to talk about it.
A week later her mother called to report she had seen in the paper where two Hattiesburg officers had been suspended for harassing motorists.
The second occurred when she was driving to Starkville with a friend to visit the friend’s daughter. Far up the road in the east-bound lane she saw a trooper turn on his light. Just before, she had been thinking, “R. drives even slower than I do.”
The two women were at the head of a line of several cars moving at a uniform speed. When the trooper got near the west-bound cars, he shot across the median, hitting a ditch full of water (this was before the center fences) creating an explosion of mud and water that engulfed his car. Once he reached the pavement, the trooper screeched through a U-turn and hit the accelerator. Thinking there must be a terrible emergency back the way he came, R. moved over and slowed to a crawl. The trooper pulled in behind the two women, his blue light flashing.
He told R. she was speeding.
“Sir, I wasn’t speeding.”
He gave her a ticket.
R. took the matter to justice court. Beth went with her. When Beth gave her account of events, the J.P. didn’t believe Beth, said she wasn’t telling the truth because she remembered too many details.
For most, encounters with law enforcement produce indelible memories. You remember everything.
R. wrote a letter recounting the incident and mailed copies to the officer’s supervisors.
“I have a lot of respect for law enforcement,” she said later. “It took me a long time to send it.”
She heard nothing back and assumed nothing would be done.
After dinner Friday evening, Beth went to her computer and typed in the name of the officer who issued R. the ticket — she remembers his name seven years later.
A 2010 story from the Brookhaven Daily Leader popped up: “Trooper loses control in hydroplane mishap.” This was two years after her and R.’s encounter.
According to the news story, the officer said “he hit a puddle of water and went off the right side of the road where he hit a mailbox, and then came across to the other side and hit a tree.”
The article also reported “the officer had been transferred to Troop M from the Starkville district some time ago,” (never underestimate the power of a well-written letter) and he would be getting a “second-hand” vehicle as a replacement for his Crown Victoria “until another vehicle is available.”
Two years ago, my friend J. was stopped for speeding by the highway patrol. He was speeding.
As the patrolman approached his car, J. braced for the worst.
“Hello sir, you know you were speeding?” the patrolman asked.
“Yes, I was.”
“I’m going to have to write you a ticket.”
So far, so good, right? Here’s the part that floored him.
“Look,” the trooper said, when he handed J. the ticket, “I want you to be careful out here because I see terrible accidents all the time, and I don’t want to see you in an accident.”
J. was so flabbergasted he wrote a letter to the director of the highway patrol praising the kindness of the officer who gave him ticket.
His secretary asked him why he was writing what amounted to a thank-you letter for a speeding ticket.
“It was such politeness; I want to praise him,” he told her.
“The reason I wrote that letter was because of my other experiences,” he said to me.
“You know, I’m 53 years old,” R. told Beth after her episode with the cowboy patrolman. “And I still don’t know what to do in some situations.”
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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