"IT JUST AIN'T RIGHTEOUS": ON WITNESSING BLACK CROOKS AND WHITE COPS
Watts, Jerry G.
On numerous occasions I've seen police cars come to a screeching halt and policemen scatter in apprehending a suspect. Each time, save one, the apprehended black male was dragged along the...
...You shoulda seen these white dudes...
...This freedom I assumed because I was large, black, and male...
...It's strictly Hollywood macho...
...And why was the short black fellow whom I had just spoken to standing, newspaper over his head, in exactly the same spot where I had left him...
...I joined the remnants of the crowd in the rain, attired (but of course) in my ethnic veneer...
...In doing so, I was in some sense trying to reclaim a sense of black humanity in a neighborhood that seemingly tolerated anything inflicted upon a white person...
...The lieutenant rhetorically asked the sergeant on what grounds he could arrest the man since he wasn't doing anything but talking...
...An hour later, the cops were knocking at my door...
...I cursed myself, the white guys who lived there, and the black and Puerto Rican thieves...
...They see themselves as the enforcers of order...
...But they would know my face, name, address, and testimony...
...I hesitate to admit the other rationale that influenced my behavior that night...
...An hour or so later, the baseball game was over...
...Needless to say, this was done while the guy was handcuffed...
...I was led to one car where I was told to look at a young man who appeared to be 17 or 18 years old...
...I wore a rather large-brimmed black hat and occasionally would go so far as to wear sun glasses at midnight, to block out the glare of the moon...
...The short guy continued, occasionally pausing and gesturing to the crowd...
...At least once every night, I abruptly turn off the sound on the television only to discover that the steps on the stairs are nothing more than someone late for a waiting cab, or screams down the hall merely boisterous laughter...
...They simply moved...
...The waitress seemed to be too naive to appreciate the source of my anxiety...
...I couldn't be sure, but they certainly appeared to be casing the house...
...If I had been more confident in my intuitions and less concerned with appearing racist, I would have done something to dissuade them...
...To hand over one's wallet to a robber is no longer the end of the affair...
...Chance would have it that while we were talking, a police car cruised toward us...
...If you're a black man you can't even walk the streets around here without y'all messin' with him...
...Had I been mistaken...
...The little guy talked louder and louder while the white officer became increasingly angry...
...Instead I saw firemen darting into a house across the street...
...There was no chance that they would catch those people in this neighborhood...
...Though my image of police officers has changed drastically, I still think it ridiculous to label white policemen in black ghettos the primary repressive arm of the capitalist state...
...Though I am quite certain that I would not have acted differently had the victims been black, I would at least have been spared this feeling of ethnic responsibility...
...I was trapped...
...I described two of the five individuals, including the short guy who had offered me the cigarette...
...I know many Yale feminists who refuse to be escorted by males when they walk through this neighborhood at night...
...Oh yea, I know what the deal is...
...On two occasions I've been called "Nigger" by a New Haven cop, once for having the audacity to request the exact hour of the night...
...Now I rarely venture out at night...
...Nor is this to deny the presence of coldblooded, black hoodlums in this neighborhood...
...He had apprehended a suspect and found someone, in me, who was willing to say that he could positively identify him...
...Instead, I wondered if I hadn't been used...
...I had digested a sufficient amount of cant to justify Abby Rockefeller losing her priceless art collection or Diana Ross her wardrobe...
...I never saw you before tonight...
...I hadn't shied away from involvement...
...It had now really begun to annoy me that my name, address, and testimony were so recklessly thrown around in front of those I had accused...
...An almost midget-sized black guy, who looked to be well over 35, stood next to me, holding a newspaper over his head as a shield against the drizzle...
...I had seen lineups on television before, but I had never attempted to identify someone...
...This time, however, I was concerned that my secondfloor apartment window would make me a less-than-anonymous responsible citizen...
...I once said hello to him on the street, whereupon he responded with a cold stare as if I were the fool I must have been for speaking...
...The aggressive sergeant mentioned to the lieutenant that he felt like "booking" the short guy even though he wasn't a suspect in the crime...
...The cop took my address, name, phone number, and date of birth...
...This is Mr...
...Or was it fear of the police...
...Oh, what the hell, I thought, if he wasn't personally guilty, he knew who was...
...Remembering Fred, I reminded myself of my intraethnic racist beliefs...
...My vocabulary became more "down...
...But why were they waiting...
...Yet when Jimmy Baldwin, Huey Newton, and Nicki Giovanni were hollering about white ghetto cops as occupational troops, I was living in a stable, middle-class, black neighborhood in Washington, D.C., teaching my younger brother to find "Officer Friendly" whenever he felt lost...
...They didn't make my task any easier, considering the physical distance they kept from me, but I wasn't discovered until their blank stares turned into questions...
...In any case, I acted...
...Had there been a physical attack on someone, I would not have hesitated to call the New Haven police...
...This time, I wasn't surprised...
...Once, while I was listening to Cosell's baseball commentary, the blaring of rapidly approaching sirens suddenly came to a halt in front of my building...
...I belong to that decreasing number of Yalies who live in the black neighborhood...
...I acted as many Americans seem to think they would act, and as most seem to think is correct...
...I nodded, and he continued to talk about whites in general...
...I've seen how racist New Haven cops really are...
...The firemen were gone, and the three white guys were probably sifting through their wreckage upstairs...
...Standing now across the street from the smoldering house I could see the three white guys engaged in animated discussion in their backyard...
...Watts, would you come to attempt an identification...
...I immediately noticed an incongruity...
...Fortunately, a lieutenant, white of course, arrived on the scene...
...I was trapped again...
...The cop was either unimpressed by or indifferent to my precision...
...Nigger, do I look like a clock...
...A little "justice" is executed on the suspect's head, away from the crowd, and before the suspect reaches the "safety" of the jail cell...
...They were, it was argued, living so far above subsistence that it was justified, if not mandated, to take from them in the name of poor people everywhere...
...That guy had betta keep his mouth shut before he gets `jacked-up.' " I knew that he was referring to the phenomenon that involves the police van making one stop before it reaches the police station...
...If the white guys had more common sense they would have eliminated the opportunity for these lads to steal...
...Damn...
...I hesitated to say anything...
...It was clear that he didn't connect me to the fellow who only three hours earlier had stood next to him and smoked one of his "squares...
...A brick could reach the second story...
...As if to apologize for my behavior, I heard myself tell the black loudmouth that these white guys were friends of mine and that I had known them for a long while...
...He simply ignored him...
...They were up to something else...
...By orthodox American mores, I had responded as a responsible citizen...
...The sergeant repeated that we had conflicting testimony...
...Looking at the three white guys, he muttered something about white people and fire...
...The officer in charge, a stout-faced Irish-American named O'Rourke, began shouting at the short guy, warning him to shut up...
...This romanticizing of violence did not discriminate between visionaries and thugs...
...This is not one of those neighborhoods where the cops are interested in establishing good community relations...
...I tried to convince myself that it was not them I was cooperating with, but Justice...
...One of the white guys got into the police car in case he was needed to identify the stolen goods...
...Now the sergeant was filing the testimony of the short guy...
...If these white boys weren't alright [implying that somehow they weren't racist] then I wouldn't mind, but naw, they're buddies of mine and I ain't gonna let these guys get away with this...
...The short guy standing on my side of the street darted away, newspaper held in hand...
...Most of the cops are from workingclass white ethnic backgrounds, particularly Irish and Italian-American...
...I went back upstairs, and prepared to go to bed...
...The fire was burning and jumpin' out the window and they went running back into the heat just to save a few nickels and dimes...
...She said thanks and that she would get the tip in a minute...
...They abound...
...I repeated my answer to a second officer, whereupon the arresting cop decided that it was now time for what he called a "positive ID...
...This happened as a matter of course, after he was handcuffed, and before he was thrown into the van...
...uttered the lieutenant to the arresting officer...
...From the crowd of onlookers came a rhetorical, "You mean, he don't even know them white boys...
...But my ethical (read ethnic) ambivalences made my actions that night far more complex and anxiety-ridden than I would ever have thought they could be...
...In my apartment building I have been reduced to maintaining a constant crime vigil...
...What about the ghetto itself...
...I was with the police, so who needed that...
...No, I would feel little guilt in aiding the police in the arrest of an assaulter...
...They must not live round here, but Slim here [pointing to the guy seated in the rear of the cruiser whom I had just identified] lives right down the block and it don't make no sense for him to be taking anything from up here...
...My apartment rests conspicuously within New Haven's four-square-block prostitute district...
...Here I was, a Yalie, fingering these black and Puerto Rican youths in behalf of some white guys who for all I knew could have been racist as hell...
...I felt stupid for feeling betrayed...
...The last of the firemen were now leaving the house, while others were folding the hoses back into the rear of the truck...
...It also attracted a great deal of attention from passing police cars...
...I don't believe this damn world...
...Am I right...
...I believe that they saw me as a part of the ethnic totality responsible for their trouble...
...I hadn't been mistaken after all...
...When the white cops left and the white fellows moved away, I would still have to survive in this neighborhood...
...Consequently, I felt angry that the fellow who took the booth after me looked like the tip-stealing kind...
...I'm sure that he was standing in front of the house but was he really one of those that went in...
...What's more, nihilistic violence is growing...
...353...
...Emerging from my front door, I immediately saw two police cruisers, each with a suspect seated in the rear...
...Mr...
...The pity of it is that much of my action was neither well-reasoned nor principled...
...Only this time I came outside without my ethnic attire...
...Man, they treat you like dogs...
...I really didn't want this young kid to go to jail...
...A week or so earlier I had informed, that is, warned a young white waitress that I had left a tip for her on the table...
...There was a lot of excitement...
...What are you saying...
...A conflicting testimony, huh...
...The teen-agers were fidgeting as if nervous...
...Only now his hood was inside his coat collar...
...Like many Ivy League institutions located in old neighborhoods, Yale is situated between an affluent, predominantly white neighborhood, and a deteriorating, predominantly black one...
...Nothing unusual, I'm told...
...Yes, I have seen the racist sergeant since then...
...One place for such a stop was behind a vacant mansion near the Yale Divinity School...
...A kid," I said to myself...
...So why was I cooperating with a racist police force...
...They stopped it, reported the theft, and described the stolen equipment...
...I felt trapped between the aggressiveness of the police officer and the stupidity of the black guy...
...When I saw those young guys running with the stereos, I must have subconsciously visualized someone riding off with my collection of Monk...
...My leftist intellectual buddies and I could probably cope 352 with losing our stereos and television sets, but if someone were to steal our collections of Lukács or Simmel's Philosophy of Money, we would be outraged...
...The horror registered immediately...
...Neighborhood persons such as myself and disciplined cops such as the lieutenant only confuse the drama and, ultimately, get in the way...
...In some instances, for reasons that still baffle me, one of the arresting officers will almost impulsively, as if by instinct, kick the handcuffed black man in the groin...
...The inhabitants of the house, three young white guys who had only recently moved in, were running up and down the stairs bringing out many of their valued possessions and placing them in the first-floor foyer...
...A white man will take a chance on his whole life just to save some old plates, raggedy suits, and other kinds of nonsense like that...
...I soon discovered that this meant I would have to identify him face-to-face...
...I had only gotten to know the faces of the suspects...
...The short guy, now free of suspicion, began to use street psychology on me...
...If I was a white boy y'all woulda strolled right past me...
...You know they got insurance or money in the bank to buy back anything they lose, so why all this hero action...
...The black cop jumped into his car and drove away...
...I assumed that he was attempting to trap the short guy, for this little "rap" artist hadn't heard the white guy tell us that the suspect had practically admitted to the crime...
...I ain't bullshitting either, bro...
...He asked me if I wanted a "square" (cigarette...
...One might still get shot or maimed...
...But what...
...As if aware of my neutralized commitment, several of the young men sprang into the foyer just then, grabbed something, and ran with the others down the street...
...Each time, save one, the apprehended black male was dragged along the pavement, smacked in the face, or otherwise abused...
...All I wanted was the white guys not to have had their stereos ripped off...
...The front door leading to the foyer was open and whatever had been rushed from the smoke-filled upstairs to the foyer was there for all to see...
...But naw, you saw me and said let's throw that nigger there in jail...
...It just ain't righteous for me to let these young boys rip off these white dudes, man...
...Yeah, that's him...
...Why did you tell him that...
...There would be no ride to the station, and no lineup...
...Socially naive people are burdens to those of us who live in these neighborhoods...
...I regularly frequented all-night cafes and spent far too many 4:00 A.M...
...She always told me that he read as much as I did...
...was the reply...
...Others were racing with hoses to the nearest hydrant...
...You might ask, on what grounds can the person who steals not justifiably claim socioeconomic distress...
...The action was over and the drizzle, though light, was steady...
...Yet when given the chance to actualize my antiprivate-property leanings, I wilted...
...The short guy pleaded, "You'd better look again cause you're about to send an innocent man to jail...
...Am I?" I took one last drag on the cigarette, nodded again, and bid the fellow goodbye...
...The racism of urban police forces is certainly not baffling...
...I was not sure whether they were racing against the spreading second-floor flames or the axes and hoses of the firemen...
...Now barefoot and dry, I squeezed behind the sofa to lower the window shades...
...I never seen them other dudes before...
...Automatically, I turned on the lingo...
...Chance would have it that he was the one on whom I had focused my attention...
...For reasons of ignorance, limited funds, indifference or design, we have chosen to place more importance on lower rents than on the probability of physical assault or burglary...
...After a few minutes of conversation it became clear that the cop wasn't concerned with trapping the short guy...
...He was now only a foot from my forehead, far taller than he had looked from my second-story window...
...He has on the yelloworange leather jacket, the high-top white tennis shoes and the hooded orange sweat shirt I told you about...
...As for the three white guys who live across the street, I never heard a word from them after that night, not even a resigned thank you...
...Hey brother," the short hipster pleaded, "I don't know, but you say that he's the dude, man, but he ain't one of 'em...
...A black officer who had just arrived spoke softly to me, as if he too were scared of the Irish cop...
...Relieved, I asked the lieutenant for a cigarette...
...Though the trucks had departed, four or five teen-agers were still mingling around the front of the house...
...I had clearly "de-ethnicized" my style in the presence of these white police officers, which further kept the short guy from recognizing me...
...It has become an unstated rule in the black community that a crowd should quickly gather around an arrested suspect in order to restrain the behavior of the police officers...
...I put my clothes on, crossed the street, and called out to the inhabitants of the house, who were, if you believe it, still around the back talking...
...As each police car arrived, the arresting officer would introduce me to his colleagues and the gathering crowd...
...I became increasingly angered at the white guys who lived there for not being smart enough to come to the front of their house after the firemen had left...
...I know, I spent four years at Sommers [Connecticut's maximum-security prison...
...The short guy continued to "rap...
...I boldly reached inside his coat and placed the hood on the outside in order to validate my earlier description...
...Unlike them, he could see the white guys in the backyard...
...Damn it...
...Almost immediately, he began talking about how he was going to get the arresting white officer reprimanded for unjustly stopping him...
...This "take back the night" assertiveness is fine, but the burden of worry and ultimate intervention rests upon the shoulders of the responsible residents in this area who have to look out for these people, since the night hasn't quite yet been taken...
...Though I had been sure that he was one of the culprits, I was now uncertain...
...Once again, I put my clothes on...
...the tall, blonde-haired guy retorted...
...I had not become a victim but it was primarily due to chance...
...By the way, she asked, had I ever met Fred, the guy who was co-owner of the place and whom she had recently married...
...The short, old-looking, black guy was being detained in the second car...
...During the late '60s prominent black activists conferred upon those who behaved in an "Up against the wall, motherfucker . . . " fashion the title of revolutionary...
...Jail ain't fit for no man...
...In a situation similar to this a few years earlier, I had shouted down from my fourthfloor window to the bystanders, letting them know that I was watching them...
...She seemed to be an industrious person for not only did she wait on 348 the tables but, unknown to most customers, she was the co-owner of the establishment...
...I knew jails were unfit for any human...
...At worst I probably didn't think at all, responding instead in knee-jerk fashion as Dick Tracy had taught me...
...Instead, I perceived the fear in his eyes...
...In offering myself here as a witness I was in no small degree ethnically apologizing for the crime...
...hours browsing in an allnight bookstore...
...Only now do I realize that the grandiosity and distance of these justifiable thefts kept me from confronting my emotional attachment to my own property...
...In many respects I acted with the intent of showing these white guys that "all blacks weren't like that...
...Suddenly I realized that they may not have been there for the fire at all...
...A more representative image is the cop who stands speechless in the middle of the sidewalk staring at everyone who approaches and daring you to brush against him when you walk around him...
...I had looked then much like one of the locals, and neighborhood folk surely would never call the cops on 350 some black dudes in behalf of some white boys...
...That I cannot deny...
...I cut off the light and peered through the crack at the side of my shades, expecting to see another episode of "Bravado Police in Action...
...I have no rational response, but emotionally I defend my right to give to others only that of my own which I choose to give...
...By daylight it is a relatively safe, black working-class neighborhood with an interracial spattering of Yalies and a smaller community of elderly whites who were unable or, in some cases, unwilling to move when the composition of the neighborhood changed...
...Jerry G. Watts...
...a tall, unevenly bearded, sloppily clothed black man...
...I have seen the suspect I identified on numerous occasions...
...The social naivete of these white guys increased my anxieties, for now I would have to act...
...I kept late hours until several conversations with authentic street people convinced me of the unpredictability of street crime...
...Fred was seated, tall and unshaven, in my booth...
...After coffee, I heard the trucks pull away...
...I should have entertained good feelings...
...Regardless of what I wore, I would walk with a black, urban "dip" that I had inadvertently acquired while growing up in D.C...
...My antiprivate-property ideology was skin-deep...
...I have broken up fights in the hallways...
...The armed robbery of white folks was supposed to be the black man's means of redistributing wealth...
...I felt relieved...
...What about my rights...
...He is the only known witness to the crime...
...At best, I had acted out of simple selfinterest...
...I wanted to believe that he wasn't the impressionable type...
...I told the police that he ran with the others but hadn't entered the house...
...So why...
...I really didn't want to go down to the station but it was, I thought, what I had to do...
...In first adjusting to the realities of this environment, I decided not to let it restrict my movement in any measurable degree...
...Naw, it was two other dudes who ran off with them stereos...
...His handcuffs were released...
...I wondered what they were looking at...
...The drizzle made the smoke billowing from the upstairs windows all the more intense...
...But nonviolent thefts of deluxe property, I had always argued, were different...
...The crimes of the police could never challenge the crimes of the local thugs...
...Such was the nature of law enforcement in my neighborhood...
...The police do not set houses on fire after breaking into them, nor do they smash 70-yearold ladies in the head with bricks after knocking them to the ground and robbing them of their groceries and Social Security checks...
...The young man attempted to stare coldly at me, but, perhaps because of the window between us and the police officers with us, the stare did not intimidate me...
...Yet I was troubled, for surely this kid was on his way to jail...
...He has not recognized me for I go nowhere without my ethnic attire...
...The guy in the orange leather coat was definitely not one of those dudes who ran into the house...
...I also knew that the cop who was now talking to me in a civil fashion, was in no way my friend...
...A crowd was gathering...
...One is never quite sure, however, on whose behalf the order is being enforced, for all of us who live here are suspected of being criminals...
...I described what I had seen and suggested that they inventory the items in the foyer...
...Yes, he's one of them...
...Two stereo amps are missing...
...As he was unable to decipher my attitude toward these white guys and whites in general, my mere presence next to him must have delayed, if not threatened, the entire operation...
...This night uniform, which became my passport through the streets of New Haven, was quite successful, or so I thought, at keeping young hoodlums away...
...More explicitly I defend my freedom to live selfishly, though I think selfish living is unethical...
...Instead of taking any precautions to protect my identity, I was supposed to identify 349 these suspects while they and the rest of this black community identified me...
...I have not yet discovered a convincing argument that would legitimate wanton violence against either affluent or poor persons...
...I wasn't even doing nothing and end up getting handcuffed...
...Deduce what you may from this, but I've long since realized that in all important respects stereotypes of black men might as well be true...
...Perhaps I was sure but worried that the origin of my certainty was racist, for hadn't it been based upon the fact that these teen-agers were black and Puerto Rican...
...More important, I had also acquired the appropriate night-time ethnic accouterments...
...Remembering the instructions from the "Crime Stoppers' " segment of a Dick Tracy comic, I fastened my eyes on one of the teen-agers so as to be able to give an accurate description of him if necessary...
...What continues to plague me most about that evening is the moral ambiguity of my actions...
...Had it been my stereo that was stolen, I would have expected any eyewitness to aid the police department...
...Now you know that don't make no sense...
...The police have numerous 351 reasons for being afraid...
...No bet...
...On those occasions when it was too dangerous for me to intervene, I would call the New Haven police...
...A brother would've been out that house the first sign that somethin' was burnin', and he ain't even got no money, no insurance, or nothin' like that...
...The certitude of my theoretical defenses left me at that crucial moment of decision...
...Instead, I had worked with a racist and repressive arm of the capitalist state, and on my own initiative...
...I switched my light back on...
...More often than not my plea for 347 emergency help would result in a police cruiser one-half hour later...
...The white cops were so caught up with racist assumptions concerning black victimizers that they couldn't suspend them to deal professionally with me, the key to the success of their entire operation...
...Yeah, that's right, cause he was out there but he wasn't one of 'em that went in there...
...The police were, as I recall, quite amiable to those like myself who kept our faces clean, our shoes polished, and waved at passing bus drivers...
...In that instance, I am convinced, I saved both the possessions of the negligent owners and kept the young guys from committing a felony...
...The white guys heard me talking to the short guy and could not understand what I was doing...
...Though I knew he had in some way been involved in the theft, it wouldn't occur to me until several days later that he had in fact signaled to the others when it was safe to enter the foyer...
...Why had I expected otherwise...
...I was leaning against the police car's front door when one of the victims, who had been seated in the front seat of the police cruiser in which the handcuffed suspect was seated, came over to the seated cop and told him that the suspect had whispered that he would help him get his stereo equipment back if he didn't press charges...
...By night, the streets become the province of the prostitutes and their business partners in the underground economy...
Vol. 30 • July 1983 • No. 3
