I'm walking
in the most beautiful neighborhood in the District of Columbia
it's a neighborhood where I'm privileged to live but it's an unfamiliar walk
my car is broken
it's about 9pm, streets are mostly deserted
when I get about three blocks from home
a police car
slows down
I keep walking and the car makes a right turn and circles the block and meets me.
There are three cops inside
their greeting is
"Do you live around here?"
I've been in this place before
I know that that's going to be the beginning
not the end of a long series of questions that I don't feel like answering, “Where do you live?"
"Kind of cold to be walking...can I see some I_D_?"
So I ask a question instead
"Why do you want to know."
The three officers exchanged a glance
the glance is
"We got a smart ass on our hands..."
I get that a lot.
"Is it against the law," I asked, "to walk on the sidewalk if I don't live around here?"
They don't say anything, I say, "Have a nice evening officers," and head towards
home
So the police do this move that probably isn't technically called cat and mouse
but that's kind of what it is.
They park their car
on the side of the road, they turn off their lights and they watch me walk, when I
pass out of their range of vision they scoot up to where they can see me
and this way we arrive on the block where I live.
I have a question
and so I stopped
'cause for once I have the power to summon the police immediately, quicker even
than the President of the United States who lives about
uh... two miles down the road.
Sure enough, as soon as I stop
car comes right up to me
and the police
officers and I have this conversation which consists mostly of questions
"Why are you following me?"
"Why won't you tell us where you live?"
"What made you stop me?"
"We don't see a lot of people walking in this neighborhood."
"Are you following me because I'm black?"
"No, we're black too."
That answer is true.
It's true but it's not responsive.
I ask the officers have they ever been
followed around
and they say yes
but it doesn't bother them because they know that they haven't done anything.
They say they're suspicious 'cause they know everyone who lives in the neighborhood
and they don't know me, they don't see people walking in the neighborhood
what am I doing here.
I say, "Do you know who lives there?"
and I point to my house
and they say yes, we do. (laughter in background)
And so I walk
I walk up my stairs
I sit on my porch
and I wait.
I wait because I'm a professor of criminal procedure.
I wait because I remember the last time
with different officers
when I cooperated
that was on sixteenth street
They asked to search my car
I said yes
so that's what they did, or rather, one searched while the other watched me
with his hand resting on his gun
on sixteenth street
cars
zooming by
I pretended like I was invisible.
So now the officers park their car and position its spotlight on my face
all three of them join me on my porch
"Do you live here?" Yes.
"Can we see some I_D_?" No you may not.
During the antebellum period of our nation's history
if you were black
you had to carry proof
of your status slave or
free at all times
Any black who was not supervised by a white was suspect.
In North Carolina to make it easier for law enforcement
non-slave blacks
had to wear shoulder patches with the word "free"
The District of Columbia through its three officers sitting on my porch say,
"If you live here go inside
it's too cold to be outside."
I say, "I'm fine where I am."
Police say so are they
they won't leave
until I either produce some I_D_
or enter the house.
This ladies and gentlemen is where the story gets surreal.
I'd been working late because I was writing a book review for the Harvard Law
Review
The book, which I am carrying in my knapsack is race, crime and the law
by Randall Kennedy
Since, apparently none of us have anything better to do
I take the book out
and I say, “I'm going to answer your question about why
if I haven't done anything
this bothers me.”
So there's a quote from Skip Gates
Skip Gates knew about racial profiling a long time before it happened
to him in Cambridge
and he says, now this is what I'm reading to the police in nineteen ninety seven,
"Blacks in particular black men swap their experiences of police
encounters like
war stories
and there are few who don't have more than one story to tell."
and Skip goes on to talk about driving while black and I tell the cops that this is the first time
I've ever heard of
walking while black.
I have this big picture window in my house
I point and say, "I stand in that window; I see people
walking all the time
and I never see white people get stopped.
and that's why I'm not going to show them my identification.
This is not South Africa, this is not antebellum North Carolina and I don't
need a pass card.
The cops are getting mad
they say there have been burglaries in my neighborhood and car vandalism;
the police are just doing their job
and what I'm doing
I'm wasting taxpayer money
so one cop says, "He must be homeless," the other one thinks that I'm on drugs
The thing that they're certain of is that
I don't live
in the house on whose porch I sit
and they say, when they find out who I really am
I'm going to be guilty of unlawful entry, a misdemeanor.
Uh... the sergeant tells me that since I'm being evasive she's gonna interview
my neighbors
the two officers who
remain there with me radio for backup.
uh... they give the dispatcher the wrong address and I correct them (laughter in background)
soon, a second patrol car with more officers arrives so, it was cold
but I'm stubborn.
uh... finally my neighbor comes out
and identifies me.
I'm free now
free to be left alone
free to walk on a public street
free to sit on my porch
even if it's cold.
If I had a T_V_ show
I would say, "kids, don't try this at home."
It's unfortunate, but a lot of other uppity
black people have gotten themselves shot for less than what I did
but one reason I
felt safer with these cops is because they were African-American
uh... I don't think that they construed me as a violent person, they thought
that I was homeless or that I was on drugs but they didn't think that I was a
threat to them, that's not what they communicated
uh... one reason I was angry at the cops
is because they were African-American
they should have known better
so
before we go inside the cops and me, we all look at my neighbor
like he can tell us the moral of the story
What are you supposed to learn…
He's black
like us
he says he's always happy to see the police patrolling
our neighborhood
but he says there are a lot of white people who walk late at night
and they're not questioned about
their right to be there.
He tells the cops that they’re always welcome to stop by his house for coffee
and then he goes home.
The sergeant invites me to a crime prevention meeting at the police station
in a few weeks
and then the five
officers get into their two cars
and drive away.