What to say about an old routine traffic stop that was anything but routine? How lucky it wasn't worse, much worse.
May 6-7, 1998. Past mid-night, ~12:20AM. Heading home from work in my second-hand, beat-up Honda hatchback, the only car I could afford back then. I'd been working on my scientific presentation for the next morning. An immunology lab at the NIH, the PIs' work the stuff of text-books. New to the lab and to the US, my mind's still running through my data slides, slides I'd toiled over till late that night.
Preoccupied, I cross the Montrose Road and East Jefferson intersection. Become dimly aware of flashing lights behind me. Instinctively assume an ambulance and swerve to the right to give space but the lights follow. Confused, swerve to the left, again to give space but the lights still follow. Only then do I suddenly realize it's a police car not an ambulance, and immediately stop.
Cop car drives ahead, swerves to block my car and stops, cop lunges out of his car, yells to get out of the car and to keep my hands out of my pockets. No one else in sight or on the road, no person nor car. Totally shell-shocked, I get out with my hands up, left hand in a splint. A lab mishap the previous month had meant emergency tendon repair surgery in my left hand.
Moved to the curb. Proceed with exercises. So clueless, I realize only later they're tests for ascertaining alcohol-induced driving impairment. Pass those tests? Of course. After all, I hadn't consumed alcohol, ever. Cop's still haranguing me. Says I'm not on alcohol but he's sure I'm on something. What is it? Point to my ID badge, explain to the cop that I worked at NIH, that I'd initially mistaken his car lights for an ambulance, that my mind was on my next morning's presentation. Patent innocence and naivete of someone habituated to speaking truthfully and used to being believed.
Response? To cuff me. Threatens to take me into custody. With my left arm in a splint, struggles to put the cuffs with my arms in the back, finally cuffs in front. Pitiful and thus fittingly absurd.
Second cop car with two cops pulls up. Shine a light into my face. First cop says I was clean for drink. Explain my story to them, ask why the first cop's treating me so badly. Shrug, say they can't do anything about it, it's his call. Drive off.
Cop tells me I'm not fit to drive my car home. Not alcohol but I'm on something, he doesn't know what or so he insists. Calls for a tow truck. We wait for it. My apartment is less than 500 yards away. After it arrives, asks if I have the $75 to pay for it, uncuffs me, tells me to get out and go home with the tow truck. Drives off, never explaining why he cuffed and uncuffed me.
Get home around 2AM. Pay off the tow truck driver. Do I sleep that night? Don't remember. Next morning, get dressed, go to Bagel City bagels, get bagels and cream cheese for the presentation, go to NIH and present my data at 10:30 as usual.
After the presentation, tell my PI (Principal Investigator) about my mishap. She advises to not pay the tickets and to instead appeal in traffic court. Also to write everything down while it's still fresh in my mind.
I write down everything as I remember it and send it to the First Secretary, Consul, Embassy of India in Washington D.C.. Also send a copy to Bob Levey, a Washington Post reporter then covering disproportionate use of force by local cops. He thanks me for sending him my report but he's moved on from covering this story. Meet the vice-consul at the Indian Consulate in Washington, D.C.. Unsurprisingly, a dead end there too.
September 14, 1998. My day in traffic court. Cop lies, says I was on alcohol that night. My threadbare protection? That his own recording of the facts don't support his lie. After all, when it's my turn to speak, I freeze. Never been in court. Judge decides quickly. Just fines to be paid after all. Pay at the counter with a personal check. Now history, the entire event meticulously documented, labeled and filed away in my ever-burgeoning file cabinet of a life.
Other things take longer to put away. For years, while driving, whenever I heard the sound of sirens, be they cops or ambulances, one of my legs would start trembling uncontrollably.
I'd made a traffic error for sure. Past midnight, traffic signs stop working. If they blink orange, slow and go. If they turn red, stop and go. At the Montrose intersection, they'd blinked red. I should have stopped before going. Instead my error was to slow and go. A new driver, I'd only learnt car driving after coming to the US. My mind was also too much on my presentation.
Did my traffic error justify this cop cuffing me and threatening to take me into custody? Certainly not. Diligent researcher, not involved in anything even remotely anti-social or criminal. Ours the only cars on that road while this entire incident transpired. Safe neighborhood, not a drug- and/or crime-infested one. Yet so lucky it didn't end another way.
Smart phone cameras. One brutal incident after another uncovering a critical slice of American culture that stayed largely hidden or unspoken in polite society, a culture of police impunity, especially against non-whites. Beggars the imagination that an immigrant scientist could have a harrowing personal experience about cops and yet I do, that too years old. My bad luck? Maybe. Certainly arbitrary and capricious. An anomaly? Certainly not, too many tragic videos attest to a culture of law enforcers habitually violating the rule of law.
Power exercised arbitrarily, with bias. Inevitable when complacence, willful ignorance and apathy drive a Faustian bargain prioritizing so-called safety and security at the expense of accountability. A basic tenet for an equitable society, selective or non-existent accountability desiccates human relations. What withers first? Humanism. Is it even possible to prosper and feel good about ourselves without it? Rather, isn't denying others basic dignity by opportunistically abusing power the very manifestation of privation of human decency? After all, what's civility but to treat each other with a modicum of dignity, and to not dehumanize? Easy to say, 'let's reverse course'. Not so in practice. Once given away, arbitrarily bestowed power isn't easily wrested back, nor its pernicious corrosion of human values easily reversed.
What's behavior worthy of emulation? One where individual dignity prevails. Going to traffic court, lodging my complaint with the Indian Embassy in writing and in person, writing to the Washington Post's Bob Levey, all to reclaim my dignity because I choose to live a life where it's sacrosanct. It behooves each and every one of us to choose to make this the norm in our lives but are we equally up to the task? Not in the least, else why this ruinous state of affairs where bigotry and inequity of one kind or the other prevail the world over? Not simply because bigots and other agents of inequity exist but because cultures tolerate and even accommodate them. And so, driven by cravenness, humanity's caravan of the absurd lumbers on in perpetuity, a Sisyphean quest seeking to create nobler versions of ourselves.
https://tirumalaikamala.quora.com/Power-without-accountability-creates-a-desert-where-disdain-blooms-at-the-expense-of-humanism-and-dignity
May 6-7, 1998. Past mid-night, ~12:20AM. Heading home from work in my second-hand, beat-up Honda hatchback, the only car I could afford back then. I'd been working on my scientific presentation for the next morning. An immunology lab at the NIH, the PIs' work the stuff of text-books. New to the lab and to the US, my mind's still running through my data slides, slides I'd toiled over till late that night.
Preoccupied, I cross the Montrose Road and East Jefferson intersection. Become dimly aware of flashing lights behind me. Instinctively assume an ambulance and swerve to the right to give space but the lights follow. Confused, swerve to the left, again to give space but the lights still follow. Only then do I suddenly realize it's a police car not an ambulance, and immediately stop.
Cop car drives ahead, swerves to block my car and stops, cop lunges out of his car, yells to get out of the car and to keep my hands out of my pockets. No one else in sight or on the road, no person nor car. Totally shell-shocked, I get out with my hands up, left hand in a splint. A lab mishap the previous month had meant emergency tendon repair surgery in my left hand.
Moved to the curb. Proceed with exercises. So clueless, I realize only later they're tests for ascertaining alcohol-induced driving impairment. Pass those tests? Of course. After all, I hadn't consumed alcohol, ever. Cop's still haranguing me. Says I'm not on alcohol but he's sure I'm on something. What is it? Point to my ID badge, explain to the cop that I worked at NIH, that I'd initially mistaken his car lights for an ambulance, that my mind was on my next morning's presentation. Patent innocence and naivete of someone habituated to speaking truthfully and used to being believed.
Response? To cuff me. Threatens to take me into custody. With my left arm in a splint, struggles to put the cuffs with my arms in the back, finally cuffs in front. Pitiful and thus fittingly absurd.
Second cop car with two cops pulls up. Shine a light into my face. First cop says I was clean for drink. Explain my story to them, ask why the first cop's treating me so badly. Shrug, say they can't do anything about it, it's his call. Drive off.
Cop tells me I'm not fit to drive my car home. Not alcohol but I'm on something, he doesn't know what or so he insists. Calls for a tow truck. We wait for it. My apartment is less than 500 yards away. After it arrives, asks if I have the $75 to pay for it, uncuffs me, tells me to get out and go home with the tow truck. Drives off, never explaining why he cuffed and uncuffed me.
Get home around 2AM. Pay off the tow truck driver. Do I sleep that night? Don't remember. Next morning, get dressed, go to Bagel City bagels, get bagels and cream cheese for the presentation, go to NIH and present my data at 10:30 as usual.
After the presentation, tell my PI (Principal Investigator) about my mishap. She advises to not pay the tickets and to instead appeal in traffic court. Also to write everything down while it's still fresh in my mind.
I write down everything as I remember it and send it to the First Secretary, Consul, Embassy of India in Washington D.C.. Also send a copy to Bob Levey, a Washington Post reporter then covering disproportionate use of force by local cops. He thanks me for sending him my report but he's moved on from covering this story. Meet the vice-consul at the Indian Consulate in Washington, D.C.. Unsurprisingly, a dead end there too.
September 14, 1998. My day in traffic court. Cop lies, says I was on alcohol that night. My threadbare protection? That his own recording of the facts don't support his lie. After all, when it's my turn to speak, I freeze. Never been in court. Judge decides quickly. Just fines to be paid after all. Pay at the counter with a personal check. Now history, the entire event meticulously documented, labeled and filed away in my ever-burgeoning file cabinet of a life.
Other things take longer to put away. For years, while driving, whenever I heard the sound of sirens, be they cops or ambulances, one of my legs would start trembling uncontrollably.
I'd made a traffic error for sure. Past midnight, traffic signs stop working. If they blink orange, slow and go. If they turn red, stop and go. At the Montrose intersection, they'd blinked red. I should have stopped before going. Instead my error was to slow and go. A new driver, I'd only learnt car driving after coming to the US. My mind was also too much on my presentation.
Did my traffic error justify this cop cuffing me and threatening to take me into custody? Certainly not. Diligent researcher, not involved in anything even remotely anti-social or criminal. Ours the only cars on that road while this entire incident transpired. Safe neighborhood, not a drug- and/or crime-infested one. Yet so lucky it didn't end another way.
Smart phone cameras. One brutal incident after another uncovering a critical slice of American culture that stayed largely hidden or unspoken in polite society, a culture of police impunity, especially against non-whites. Beggars the imagination that an immigrant scientist could have a harrowing personal experience about cops and yet I do, that too years old. My bad luck? Maybe. Certainly arbitrary and capricious. An anomaly? Certainly not, too many tragic videos attest to a culture of law enforcers habitually violating the rule of law.
Power exercised arbitrarily, with bias. Inevitable when complacence, willful ignorance and apathy drive a Faustian bargain prioritizing so-called safety and security at the expense of accountability. A basic tenet for an equitable society, selective or non-existent accountability desiccates human relations. What withers first? Humanism. Is it even possible to prosper and feel good about ourselves without it? Rather, isn't denying others basic dignity by opportunistically abusing power the very manifestation of privation of human decency? After all, what's civility but to treat each other with a modicum of dignity, and to not dehumanize? Easy to say, 'let's reverse course'. Not so in practice. Once given away, arbitrarily bestowed power isn't easily wrested back, nor its pernicious corrosion of human values easily reversed.
What's behavior worthy of emulation? One where individual dignity prevails. Going to traffic court, lodging my complaint with the Indian Embassy in writing and in person, writing to the Washington Post's Bob Levey, all to reclaim my dignity because I choose to live a life where it's sacrosanct. It behooves each and every one of us to choose to make this the norm in our lives but are we equally up to the task? Not in the least, else why this ruinous state of affairs where bigotry and inequity of one kind or the other prevail the world over? Not simply because bigots and other agents of inequity exist but because cultures tolerate and even accommodate them. And so, driven by cravenness, humanity's caravan of the absurd lumbers on in perpetuity, a Sisyphean quest seeking to create nobler versions of ourselves.
https://tirumalaikamala.quora.com/Power-without-accountability-creates-a-desert-where-disdain-blooms-at-the-expense-of-humanism-and-dignity
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