passing from a distance
Today I was surrounded by nine cops and threatened with arrest for being in a public park with my pants unbuttoned and having my underwear showing. They claimed this was legally “indecent exposure”. I told them that they were lying.
It turns out that while I was doing a photoshoot with a friend of mine (and for once I wasn’t behind the camera), someone thought I was actually a boyscout from off in the distance. They must have seen my friend and I embrace and kiss, and they called the police to report a child molestation.
When the first cop showed up, he accused us of trespassing, pointing to a sign on the fence of a fenced-in warehouse nearby and asking me to read it. “It says Keep Out? But we are on the outside of the fence.” The pig said something really stupid about how there was probably a sign on the other side of the fence that said the exact same thing (that’s right, inside of the fenced-in compound). My friend and I weren’t touching, but my pants were unbuttoned and my shirt was untucked. The cop demanded our IDs. Then 6 other cops showed up and I demanded to know what was going on. The cop was obviously grasping at straws for a reason to ID us and I obviously didn’t have the whole story.
So yeah, another cop tells me the story about the phone call they got. They run our IDs. Turns out my friend is a registered sex offender, which really doesn’t help the situation. I’m not a minor, and also, we’re not doing anything illegal, but the cops are still talking to us like we’ve been caught breaking the law. Actually they’re saying that directly and threatening to arrest us. And saying all kinds of sex-shaming bullshit. They separate us to take a statement from my friend for the police report.
One of the pigs says, “Do you know your friend is a sex offender?” Another says, “so where did you meet this guy?” One pig smiles slyly at my friend and is pleased with himself for his diagnoses. “I see. So that’s why you chose her. Instead of little boys you choose girls that look like little boys.” They think my ID is fake or they’re stupid, because they ask me my age about six different times between them.
Since the asshole dudebro cop couldn’t get through to me, they decided to send in hardass lady cop to harass me a little more while they were taking my friend’s statement. She and another pig both told me repeatedly that I had been breaking the law by “exposing myself.” I told them I didn’t believe them. They told me over and over. They insisted. It was quite confusing in a way, because I know for a fact that there’s no way in hell that it is illegal to have your pants unbuttoned in the state of California.
Ordinarily I guess I would have refused to talk to pigs at all. Seemed pertinent for my friend that I cooperate though. Two queers and nine pigs. Wasn’t good odds in favor of resistance.
Petalo & Everic, photographed by Sean Minteh
Trayvon’s blackness wasn’t something he could hide, so it wouldn’t have mattered whether he’d worn a hoodie or a t-shirt that fateful night. It mattered that he was black, and it mattered that the person who shot him had a vendetta out for black men before Trayvon ever set foot in the neighborhood. It matters that in 2012, there are more black men in prison today than those who were enslaved in 1850. It matters that blacks, in particular black men, are overrepresented in the criminal justice system and underrepresented in colleges. It matters that the black unemployment rate is nearly double that of unemployment for the general population. It matters that blacks are less likely to be screened, diagnosed, and treated for preventable diseases, less likely to own homes, less likely to receive research grants, and more likely to retire in poverty than their white counterparts. It matters that blacks are less likely than whites to abuse drugs, but more likely to be convicted of drug crimes. None of these statistics are due to a genetic predisposition to violence, poor health and underachievement, instead as a direct result of the disenfranchisement of blacks that has occurred in this country for more than 200 years at the hands of slavery, Jim Crow Laws, discrimination, and the institutionalized racism in our schools, banks, businesses, courts, and prisons that has torn apart our families and fractured our community. Just like Trayvon Martin, race mattered for Amadou Diallo, Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Emmett Till, and hundreds more we will never know the name of who died because of their skin color.
patchthatsweater:
mullet pigtails + black crystal pot leaf earrings
omg too adorable. love yr mullet pigtails.
