I grew up in a small, all-white town. We had an official curfew every night. Being teenage boys, we ignored the curfew as often as we possibly could. Our adventures in breaking curfew were generally silly, lowbrow, and a little bit mean. We raided and stole produce from people's gardens, and pelted moving vehicles with that produce. Occasionally we'd blow up someone's mailbox or picture window with heavy duty, delayed-fuse fireworks. On a few daring nights, some of us tossed smoke bombs into the police station, which was located in a classic town clock building a la Back to the Future.
And here is my point. There were a few times when the police caught us in the act of doing something, and we ran. One of the cops yelled, "Stop or I'll shoot," and we kept running. We absolutely, all of us, knew in our hearts that no police officer was going to shoot us for stealing tomatoes or plopping cars with them. On two occasions, a shot was fired. When those shots were fired, we kept running anyway. All of us knew they were warning shots, probably fired straight up into the air. We absolutely, 100% knew that no police officer was going to aim a gun at one of us for curfew violation or tossing a smoke bomb. In fact, when we would later reconvene after a half mile of madly sprinting across streets and through yards, we would joke about our modestly funded police department now being bereft of ammo because they had used "The Bullet" for their warning shot.
Never did it enter our minds that a cop would consider actually shooting at us. We never even discussed the possibility.
That was our white teenage delinquent experience with the police in a small town. We knew the cops saw us as people. We saw the cops as people. The understood contract was that catching someone doing some stupidness was no reason to beat them up or shoot at them. Growing up in that kind of rational, proportional-response environment, I took it for granted. I cannot imagine what it must be like to grow up actually fearing the police and worrying that they might be trigger happy. That's an entirely different societal context, and a whole different perspective on the world. That kind of alienation and fear of local authority is something you wouldn't be able to shake. Ever. It would color your entire life.
Postscript
I was once told by a gas station clerk that my twenty-dollar bill was no good. I asked for it back. He gave it to me. I got in my car, still squinting at the bill. The clerk could see my license plate, but I didn't think anything of it. I just drove off. The clerk didn't call the police; nobody ever questioned me. My best guess was that my local bank had given me the twenty, so I went there with the bill and demanded they swap it out. I gave them hell. They swapped it for me. That was the end of it.
I cannot imagine someone kneeling on my neck had I managed to pass that bad twenty dollars.
Bob Dietz
June 6, 2020
