In a fit of masochism and guilt, I agreed to spend yesterday
evening in Northern Virginia. We’re not talking
right-across-the-river-from-D.C. (where I live) NoVa, but the
end-of-the-train-line, need-a-car-to-get-around part. My friend was
picking me up from the Metro station, where I walked out past the
bus stops and waited by what turned out to be a semi-busy
street.
Pacing near this entrance to the Metro complex, I was
daydreaming as usual, so I didn’t see my friend pull up to the
stoplight. He wound down his window and waved out his hand to get
my attention. I nodded and made some hand gesture of
acknowledgement as the light changed and he turned into the lot,
circling around and pulling up beside me. I got in. And that is
all. But it struck me getting in that this was exactly the kind of
circumstance that could get some women in some parts of the country
arrested for “manifesting an intent to commit prostitution”.
Like, exactly. I’ve never had to worry about this sort of thing,
though, because I look like who a lot of cops think they’re here to
protect.
The only correlate I have to stories of routine street
harassment and cruelty by cops is how often I haven’t been
bothered, arrested, or abused. And let’s just say I’m no angel. I
have absolutely walked the streets of so many cities drinking
alcohol from travel mugs, ducking into dark parks and alleys to
sneak a joint or a kiss; purchased drugs and even
untaxed cigarettes in the relative open;
and generally engaged in the kind of semi-suspicious and
minimally-criminal public behavior that I’m certain would get
someone with darker skin or more testosterone at least harassed (if
not arrested or assaulted) many times over.
I wouldn’t be writing about any of this right now
except that I woke up this morning and read Brian Doherty’s
post here about actress Danièle Watts. Watts—who appeared on
Weeds (where she played a cop) and in the film
Django Unchained and now on the new TV show
Partners—was handcuffed and detained by police officers in
Studio City, California, after being affectionate with her husband
in public in the middle of the day.
“Today, Daniele
Watts & I were accosted by police officers after
showing our affection publicly,” wrote
her husband, raw foods chef Brian James Lucas, on Facebook.
From the questions the officer were asking, he said it was clear
that whoever had called them in thought that Watts, a black woman,
was a prostitute and he, a white man, was her client (something
“that happened to her and her father when she was 16” as well).
Because of my past experience with the law, I gave him my ID
knowing we did nothing wrong and when they asked D for hers, she
refused to give it because they had no right to do so. So they
handcuffed her and threw her roughly into the back of the cop car
until they could figure out who she was. In the process of
handcuffing her, they cut her wrist, which was truly NOT
COOL!!!
You can read Watts’
update in full here and his in
full here.
I wish everyone had the privilege I’ve had to not just break
dumb laws without really fearing repercussion but even simply to go
about regular life without being treated like a criminal. Incidents
like this one with Watts, however, show how it’s not merely about
the attitudes of cops. Excluding everything the officers did or
didn’t do once they showed up, there’s still the fact that someone
seems to have called them on an assumption that this young black
woman cozying up to a white man must be a prostitute. Absent
anything the cops did
in Chris Lollie’s case, there’s still the fact that someone
called them in to investigate a black man suspiciously sitting
idly. There’s the fact that in my decade of living, working,
walking, loitering, and sometimes breaking the law in cities, no
one has ever called the cops on me.
If there’s any non-bleak takeaway here, it’s perhaps that
decriminalizing the bodily autonomy of adults in terms of things
like drug use and prostitution would give cops and busybodies a lot
less cause or pretense to investigate and harass. I’m beginning to
believe anything that lessens the amount of contact that cops can
have with the public is pretty much a net gain for public safety
and well-being.
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