...
"Why? What's the problem?"
"Clean that up!"
"Okay, sorry officer I didn't know"
"Clean that up!"
"Okay, I couldn't find a washroom I'm sorry."
"Well you better clean that up or I'll give you a ticket!"
"How am I gonna clean that up?"
"I don't know, clean it up!"
"How?"
(circular conversation continues for about a minute... after that)
"How about if I come into your house and piss in your room?"
"Okay, this isn't your house, that isn't the same!"
"Well, that is disgusting!....How about I give you a ticket for tresspassing?"
"Well I'm not tresspassing, I paid for parking here!"
"How about I give you a ticket for littering?"
"How is that littering? I mean the booth is right over there, and I didn't drop any garbage."
"Okay, you're under arrest!"
"For what?"
"You're under arrest, come with me!"
"No! What's my crime? Okay, I'm calling my lawyer, this is..."
-Grabs arm, tugs on jacket, reaches for pocket!)
"Let go of me, where are you taking me?"
-Grabs person's throat, begins to choke him, onlookers begin to converge and gasp!"
"YO (friend's name), ARE YOU FILMING THIS? GET THIS ON CAMERA!"
(friends and onlookers -including me- begin to take pictures."
"Do not resist arrest!"
"I'm not resisting! What's the charge?" (arms in the air, backing away from the officer)
"Come with me!"
-The two struggle, the guy eventually breaks free of the officer's hold, and looses him in the staircase, the officer returns to viewable range.
"I'm okay!" (the officer says, wow!)
Toronto Police Force: "To Protect and Serve"
Officer Badge Number: 995
So I see all of this after a lovely Friday night downtown. I'm still in my van.... the cop realised that I'm there witnessing the whole thing. He starts coming up to the van to scream at me. Tapping on the van and yelling, "Get out of here!" He and the hotel manager start calling me shit. The friends who videotaped this on their camera phones have by now been ordered to leave.
So they're forcing me to leave, the parking manager is calling me a fucking asshole. I'm like, "I'm a paying customer, here is my chip and I don't need your abuse!" The guy slaps the chip away from my hand! I say, "Step the hell away from my van and don't touch me again!" I ask the cop to tell me where I can form a complaint, he's giving me the sarcastic runaround.. So i stop my van in teh middle of the driveway.
We get into an argument, yadda yadda yadda I take the cops badge number and leave... I flip him and the hotel manager the bird on my way out, and drive off. I'm never parking at the fucking Paramount on Richmond and John again! Support my boycott!!
As for the police, well how far into my story did it take you to realise that the guy and his friends were black? Those who have turned a completely blind eye to the inequality of treatment by the police force might say something like, "I realised he was black when he said Yo!" Anyway, everyone likes to dismiss the double-standard because it seems so cliche - the pigs holding down the black man! Then when people complain about racial profiling and so forth, those who have already decided to ignore the double standard continue their ignorance by dismissing our claims.
I'm not going to say that a white guy wouldn't have been approached by the police for taking a piss in an underground parking lot (hell the officer was chinese anyway!) But I'm still waiting for the day where someone non-ethnic has a cop making every effort to throw unjust charges his way, and then when he calls the cop on that injustice the cop proceeds to assault him! Black folk historically cry "Injustice!" loud and for everyone to hear in order to get some equality, both politically through marches, or on a small scale. I'm no different, I sat there and refused to leave and took pictures with guys I didn't even know of this shit going down!
When your average Joe asks, "What's the charge?" your overage cop tells him! When your average Ray-Ray from the hood asks, "What's the charge?" the story goes a little something like that!
No comments:
Post a Comment