The incident that inspired me to draw the Douché series of comics also led me to write a Letter to the Editor of our local newspaper. I must have been upset if I would stoop to dealing with newspapers.
(I’ve removed the local names from the letter since I don’t want people coming to my house).
To the Local Police Department,
I’m curious and I hope you can answer this question. Am I allowed to have Black friends and family members without having to fear undue harassment by local law enforcement officials?
I’m a 39 year old White male and I live in the O.L. area of our city. On Saturday night, one of your officers stopped by my house to make sure everything was okay. Apparently he had seen my son (who is Black) coming home. When my son tried to take a short cut across our backyard he found the back gate locked. He could have walked around the block to the front of the house, but as many teenagers are wont to do, he decided to continue on the shortest path home, jumped our fence and came in via the backdoor. The officer who witnessed this did his job, which I am not complaining about, and investigated: he was soon ringing my doorbell and making sure everything was okay. After he asked if someone wearing a white hoodie had entered my house from the back I asked my son, now upstairs, if it was him. He said it was and said sorry for jumping our fence.
Okay, thanks for checking officer. End of conversation, right? No, the officer asked my son to come downstairs to be questioned. “Why did you jump the gate? Why did you run when you saw me?” My son answered that he hadn’t seen the police officer and needed to get home to use the bathroom. “Why would I run if I saw you?” asked my son.
“Good question, why would you run?” responded the officer.
Really? My son hopped the back fence. I identified my son. Is it necessary for you to further interrogate him? You could hear the attitude in the officer’s voice. Finally the officer leaves after, I can only assume, assessing that the situation was okay. Encounter finished, right? Not yet.
Not ten minutes later my best friend, who had been visiting that evening and witnessed this encounter, was going home from my house. My best friend, also Black, gets no more than a block from my house when he is pulled over by this same officer for a “dim” tail light. During this traffic stop the officer asks, “Why are you in this part of town”.
Perhaps the officer did not recognize my friend’s vehicle from ten minutes earlier – when he parked behind it in the driveway. I wasn’t aware that African Americans needed a specific reason to visit our part of the city.
We have lived in this city for the past ten years, but have only moved to the O.L. area within the last two years. I wasn’t aware of any such restrictions. For future reference do I need to provide some sort of pass to any of my Black friends so that they may visit me after a certain hour? Should I sign it “Tovias, White Resident” so you’ll know it’s okay? Would it be necessary to identify myself as a Jew as well?
As I said, I appreciate you checking when you saw someone enter my backyard by climbing over the fence, but once the matter has been cleared I could do without you harassing my family and friends if you don’t mind.
Many thanks,
Tovias
