Milwaukee Riots

I support #BlackLivesMatter. I also support police officers. I am not naturally inclined, when hearing about a conflict between residents and officers, to believe one side or the other until I’ve heard all the facts. There have been some troubling stories making the news on both sides this summer. But the situation in Milwaukee speaks to me. Partly because Hubby is from there so I have some connection, and partly because of the circumstances of this shooting.See, something both similar and radically different happened to me when I was a young person. I was driving a fellow worker home from a late weekend shift at Burger King one summer in college. I was earning a few bucks to put in the bank and living with my mom in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The community is an affluent one. I was maybe 20, wearing a tacky polyester uniform and smelling like french fries. I was tired. It was the middle of the night. We were in a residential neighborhood and a police officer lit me up from behind. I had a headlight out, but I honestly can’t remember if I knew that or not. It wasn’t my car; my mom let me use hers when she didn’t need it.

I panicked. You know that fight or flight response we hear so much about from sociologists? It’s a real thing. I had done absolutely nothing wrong and yet I was terrified. I reacted. I stomped on the gas and swerved down a side street. I turned several corners, killed the lights, and began trying to climb under the dash.

I had never done anything more serious than jaywalking in my life. I had never had a negative interaction with a police officer. I was not afraid of the police, in general. I had not been drinking or doing drugs. I had nothing illegal or incriminating in the car. And yet, I fled. I attempted to evade a police officer.

My fellow shift worker had a clearer head. She used a calm voice and told me to climb out from under the dash and turn the lights back on. I was still scared but I realized this was the best course of action. I turned on the lights and sat there. The officer pulled up behind us and approached.

“Are you aware you have a light out?” he asked, very politely. I don’t remember what I said. He said he was going to write me a ticket. Then he looked down at me (and this I remember clearly) and said, “Ma’am, were you trying to outrun me?” Ma’am. He called me ma’am when he asked if I’d tried to outrun him.

“I’m just scared to death, officer,” I said. He nodded and gave me a little smile. Wrote me a ticket. Sent me on my way.

I realize this is light years away from the experience of many Black motorists. I’ve read the articles from young Black men who have been pulled over simply for Driving While Black over and over and over and over. I’m not trying to say the system isn’t rigged against them. It is. I clearly benefited from: my race, my gender, my class, community standards, and the clear skill of the attending officer to deescalate situations.

But I’ll tell you what I also benefited from and that was not carrying a gun and threatening a police officer with it.

I’ve been thinking about the Milwaukee situation in particular and the resulting property destruction and injuries, a city on edge and more violence looming. What happened here? Is this another incident of a police officer overreacting and a young man ending up dead? I have to say no. No matter how many “chips” this young man had stacked against him he chose to pull a gun on a police officer. You cannot reasonably expect an officer (or anyone) not to defend themselves in the face of a drawn weapon.

I’m not a gun fan. I think there should be fewer of them and that fewer people should have them. I’m perfectly comfortable saying, “I’m the one they’re talking about when the NRA speaks of the ‘they’ that is coming to get your guns.” And yet this is a gun death where even I say, “Well what did you think was going to happen?” without a lot of sympathy.

YOU DON’T DRAW A WEAPON ON A COP. PERIOD.

And you don’t take to the streets and burn businesses down afterwards. This is completely out of control. I understand there’s frustration about the ways that police officers and the Black community interact but this is not the situation to hold up as a rallying cry.

Go home, Milwaukee.