forgotten_aria

Sometime in the late 1990's I was held up by knife point by two men, one black and one Latino. At time my focus was on the knife they were holding, not on their faces, so I didn't have a good idea of what they looked like. (my ability to identify faces is bad even in the best circumstances.)

Later that week, still processing what had happened to me, I saw a black man on MIT campus who looked vaguely like one of the two, but I really wasn't sure at all. At the time I still believed the lie that police where there to help people so I called campus police, not to ask them to come, but to ask them how sure I needed to be and how I could be more certain.

They didn't listen to me. I just wanted information, I didn't want them to come. They kept badgering me, Where was you? Where was I calling from? Where are you?

I made the mistake of telling them my location and they came and harassed the poor man. I was horrified and upset. I had phoned to better understand my options for figuring out if this was the person, asking purely for information and instead accidentally brought the campus police down on him. Physically he was completely unhurt, but there was still damage done. The police weren't interested in listening to me, they weren't interested in understanding my doubt, they wanted to swoop in and stop crime, even if in trying to do so incorrectly caused more harm than good. They didn't want to understand, they wanted to take action.

That day I learned calling the police can cause more harm than good.

The system needs to be dismantled. Even good cops have this mentality that they are always rushing in to fight the bad guy, but most of the time there isn't a bad guy. Too much of policing is about fear and power, when it needs to be about understanding and helping. If it had been the real police, my mistake of trusting the police might have gotten that man killed. Defund the police, the system is broken beyond repair. Rebuild it. Stop excessive force and killing black people!