As a neighborhood leader I had the opportunity to ride along with a Baltimore police officer a few years ago. So late one afternoon I went into the Northern District Police Station where I was assigned to a young patrolman — we'll call him Frank. We cruised the main roads of North Baltimore until an urgent call came through : Officers needed at York and Woodbourne avenues. We sped to the intersection to find a sergeant holding onto a tall, young, African-American man in shorts and T-shirt. It turned out that the man had said something disrespectful while he and the officer were waiting for fried fish in the carryout next door. Three other policemen jumped out of their cars and barked questions at the youth while Frank took his waistband, shook it vigorously up and down, then felt inside his drawers. Though this was allegedly a drug search, no contraband was found: the lesson given was to be subservient to the police.
We drove over to The Alameda where Frank took me into a laundromat — a known stash place, he told me — and searched behind the machines and in cupboards that he had asked the manager to unlock; she reluctantly did so, and he rummaged around inside them, but without the results he sought.
We got a call about a minor accident on Gittings Avenue, an upscale street on the edge of the city. Frank took details and apologized to the well-dressed white people involved while he checked on their registration, assuring them that they would be on their way soon, and giving them report forms that they could forward to their insurers. As we cruised into the eastern, blacker side of the district, Frank spotted a car with a broken tail light. Turning on his siren, he overtook the car and ordered the driver to stop, get out of the car and sit on the sidewalk. (I thought how I would dislike being forced to do this, but then realized that my race would save me from this indignity.) He asked to search the car and trunk, giving no indication that the driver had a choice; again, nothing illegal was found. He then demanded the car insurance; it had recently expired, so Frank told the driver he had a choice: either the car would be towed to the impound lot and he would have to pay to get it released, or a legal driver could come and drive the car home. After 40 minutes on the dirty sidewalk, another African American was shown the perils of driving while black.
I went home shaken, with a new attitude toward my city's police force: If they behaved like this while accompanied by a community observer, how did they treat black citizens when they were alone?
Nick Sheridan, Baltimore