What makes you think you are a good person?

Religion? Morality? Ethics? Apathy? Cowardice? Selflesness? Arrogance?

What defines a good person?

And who the hell are you to pass judgement, you can feel, you can empathize, and you have your pride, you are human, and as such, I dont think you can judge humanity.

Male or female,race or colour, it makes no difference. I am not condemning you for any of those factors, im condemning your arrogance for being human.

That particular officer as it turned out was in his last week of employment b/c only days later, he and three others fired several dozen shots at an unconscious Black woman inside her car and were eventually fired. Though not before they hi-fived, laughed and engaged in celebratory antics after the shooting, according to an officer there who witnessed the behavior.

His behavior to me was strange. His behavior along with three other White officers towards an unconscious Black woman was lethal. We were profiled differently.

I had plainclothed officers pull guns on me but both times it was mistaken identity and both times I didn’t even know initially they were police. Still, that was only when I lived in a poor neighborhood where Whites were the minority. The policing as stated is much, much different in minority neighborhoods than in White middle-class neighborhoods for example, where the attitude is more to protect and serve.

Since I’m involved in police issues, I run into a wide gambit of police officers. Some are nice, some not so nice (and one even yelled from me from his squad car b/c he was upset with my articles) but most of them know my first, last or both first and last names. It’s a rare day when I’m not called either or both by them even by officers I haven’t met.

If you are in a targeted/marginalized community, the police may end up harassing you, for starters. The police are not always your friend, and I think a lot of white, middle class America doesn’t know what it feels like to know that 911 is not a safe option for help.

I’m as priviliged as it gets: white, male, het, middle class, all that. My biggest clash with the law has to do with speeding tickets. And I still feel weird about talking to police. A few years ago, I found a bike that looked like it had been stolen and abandoned. I took it down to the precinct in case someone was looking for it and… sheesh… they wanted all my contact information, social security number, ran some sort of check in the back room, wanted all my addresses for the last so many years, and so on.

I don’t know; is it policy to run a warrants check on anyone who walks into the precinct? It felt invasive, and I’m not someone who ordinarily has reason to fear the police.

So I have some inkling of why people of color might hesitate to call 911.

Fine. Next time I’m just leaving the damn bike where I found it.

I am white by the way, but was a poor single mother and I know for a fact that classism played a huge role in how social services agencies, police and other authorities treated me when I tried my to do what was right for my daughters. The assumption was always, “Oh, they’re wild, just like the rest of those types, why bother, they won’t amount to anything and I won’t get any social points for trying anyway.”

As said, it’s like this everywhere. Why in my city did a White woman who was the victim of a fatal hit-and-run get eight homicide detectives, a sergeant and an evidence tech assigned to her case while a Black woman who was a victim of a fatal hit-and-run accident get only the obligatory two detectives? Which case was solved within 72-hours with an arrest and just recently a conviction, and which one is now considered a “cold” case?

And for women of color getting raped (which in at least one case involving the daughter of a woman I know wasn’t even considered a crime) versus a White woman getting raped, it’s the same thing.

I don’t know if it’s because my city’s homicide unit is all White men and maybe they relate more to victims and victims’ families who look more like them. Maybe it’s the racism which has been a long-standing problem. Maybe because people don’t trust the police enough for good reason to report crimes and eye witness accounts, let alone in some cases, potentially turn in family members.

If it weren’t for excellent sites like “Black and Missing” most of this wouldn’t be told, because it’s not like the media does this tremendous job in its handling of crime victims’ stories unless they’re White and preferably blonde young women.