First Parish of Honda #5
This is part of an ongoing series; the memoirs of a religious scholar as an Uber driver in Boston. See part 1, and the previous installment.
“It’s so fu***** hard to be a police officer these days.”
I tightened my grip on the wheel.
My thoughts on race and policing are no secret. I guess I’m an arm-chair activist. I think the number of black men shot and killed by police, or beaten up, or thrown in jail on dubious reasons, or their civil liberties thrown out the window, is a rampant and inexcusable problem. I think our criminal justice system is remarkably racist and in need of serious overhall. My wife, who is black, and I have had the cops called on us for no reason. I’ve seen this criminal justice system touch and cajole and tower over her family, or in the lives of my other black friends, in ways I never could have imagined happening to me in my life. I’m, Lord-willing, going to have dark-skinned kids some day. It’s personal.
And I don’t think I’ve ever been in any sort of in-depth conversation with an actual police officer about these issues. I didn’t know what to do.
Do I smile and nod? He is, after all, quite drunk and quite large and quite young and kinda aggressive.
Do I ask more questions and understand where he’s coming from? That would seem the moral high ground, the mature and progressive thing to do, I suppose?
Do I counter-point? Maybe I might broaden his perspective and he might be an ally for change from the inside.
All I could think was It’s fu***** hard to be a black man these days, too.
But I didn’t say it. I just listened for a while. I sincerely wanted to hear what he had to say.
It was late Saturday night/Sunday morning, a wonderfully lucrative time to be out driving, all the drunk rich people are stumbling out of the bars and fares have skyrocketed. I was planning on him being one of my last trips before heading home.
He was thoroughly inebriated, that was for sure. He was very frustrated that he wasn’t going home with anyone. “F****** sucks man, I really needed to get some tonight. You know? I don’t normally get weekends off.”
Couldn’t really relate with the trying to hook up at a bar thing, so I went with talking about work.
“What do you do that keeps you busy on the weekends?”
“I work for the city. Law enforcement actually.”
There is, in the US, this internal, overwhelming, almost mystical prompting to reverently shower public servants (and soldiers) with praise. It’s hard to put my finger on what about such moments and that prompting that strikes me funny. It’s more than gratitude. It’s almost self-serving. It makes me feel important. Patriotic. American. Masculine.
There is something strangely haunting about it.
“Thank you for your service.”
Despite all the elusive weirdness around that exchange, and despite my political opinions, I am absolutely sincere. I am thankful for someone’s willingness to do such a difficult and important job.
He was very humble about it. “Aw, nah man. Thank, thank you. I’m, glad to do it.”
He doesn’t want to be in law enforcement forever, though. He’s just doing it while working on his masters degree in counter-terrorism/intelligence, because the city will pay for the degree.
“It’s such a hard, draining, job. I could never do it forever.”
He rambles, somewhat aimlessly, for a while about police, and his career, and his need for sex.
He’s from West Virginia, so we compared notes about living both in the South and the Northeast.
And then he says something about how hard it is to be a cop. And I get nervous, not quite sure where this conversation is about to go.
He continues, “Just, anytime you turn on Fox or CNN you just see the worst of us, when a cop has taken it too far. And, like, it’s totally really hard. You’re scared shitless, you never know if he’s reaching for a gun or not, and you have a split second to save your life. You’re just trying to save your life. But yeah, I’m not going to defend it when cops take it too far.”
I say nothing. Well, I listen, and I nod. Trying to take it in.
I work up the courage to ask more. I go for the positive spin. I believe our police officer deserve better training, support, and guidelines, for their own sakes as much as anyone else’s. Maybe we could talk about it from that angle.
“You said it’s really taxing, and you couldn’t do it for forever. What would change that for you? What would make it better? Or is it just inherent to the whole thing?”
“I dunno man. It’s just having to see the worst in people. When you get a call, you know, it’s never for a good thing. And people always treating you like the bad guy when you’re just trying to help.”
I don’t remember exactly what he said that finally let me feel like I should lay my cards on the table. To be honest I drowned him out for a minute trying to work up some chutzpa and decide what to say.
“I mean, full disclosure, I’ve been kinda an activist on some of these brutality issues, but I…”
He cut me off. And he got really emphatic.
“Man. You go for it. That’s your fu***** right, and that’s what I’m out there defending. And you should. I’m not going to defend the cops who go too far. You get out there.”
“Yeah. Thank you. And I apprecaite that. And I totally get that there’s a lot I don’t understand about being an officer.”
We pull up to his townhouse.
“Hey man, you, you take take care. You keep doing [it was honestly so rambly I have no idea what he said here]. You drive safe, and you go make that coin!”
So, there’s that. No grand reconciliation, nor a showdown of political ideals much less any punches thrown. I wouldn’t call it a sublime moment of exhange and dialogue. He was too drunk, I too tired and too unsure
Just a very interesting encounter.
