“Donald Sterling accused of racist, sexist remarks in new lawsuit.”
Los Angeles Times 6/2/14
I stood just inside
the doorway of the mall security office watching the teenage suspect, a black
kid about sixteen years old. He sat in a
chair at a scarred, wooden table while across from him, a tough, no nonsense,
off duty cop named Robert filled out the arrest report. Between them on the table was a line of six
Swatch watches, all the rage in the 1980s.
I thought the watches were ugly, but then what did I know, a college
student trying to finance his education by working as a uniformed security guard
at a mall.
Robert, a tall,
African-American with twenty years on the force, was one of my favorite cops to
work with because he took the job seriously.
That set him apart from the other jokesters who moonlighted at the
shopping center. Those cops could always
be found sleeping in their unmarked mall rental cars or flirting with the
teenage girls who worked the shops along the plaza. Robert could be found reading the newspaper
at the food court, and if you needed him on a call, he always responded. He never condescended to the security staff
or belittled us. In a way, I admired him
because he seemed more enlightened than the other off duty cops.
The kid had the
misfortune of trying to shoplift the watches right in front of Robert as he
walked through the department store looking for his wife’s anniversary
gift. He saw him sweep the watches from
a display into an empty store shopping bag and make for the exit. Robert followed him out into the mall and
arrested him. The kid never had the
chance to run, although he immediately insisted that he paid for the watches
but dropped the receipt somewhere.
“Man, this sucks,” he
whined. “I bought them watches. Paid for ‘em with cash, too.” Robert ignored him and kept writing out his
report. “Man, can’t a brother give
another brother a break?”
Robert stopped writing
and stared at the kid. He glanced in my
direction and motioned for me to close the door. In a single fluid movement he grabbed a
handful of the kid’s shirt from across the table and pulled him out of his
seat. “I’m black,” he hissed into the
kid’s face, “but you’re a nigger! I am
not your brother!”
There was something
about the brutal way he used the racial slur that made my stomach turn, as if
he had physically slugged the kid in the face.
The room itself seemed to go dark, and I wanted to run outside for
air. Robert pushed the startled kid back
into his chair.
In my job at the mall,
we were given sensitivity training before we put on the polyester uniform and
the plastic badge. We were told that if
we used racial language or acted in a discriminatory fashion, we would be fired
immediately and escorted off the property.
The off duty cops we worked with didn’t follow those rules. Racist and sexist language was a part of
their culture, and they used those words for emphasis and punctuation. What I found strange was how being a police
officer separated them from civilians so completely that cops like Robert
stopped being black, or Hispanic, or Asian, and seemed to exist without racial
identification. They were police and
everyone else was just everyone else, or simply the enemy. I witnessed firsthand the “us against them”
mentality that would eventually culminate in a black man “proned” out on the
payment and beaten by four officers on that fateful night in 1991 when Rodney
King went down.
Words today have the
same power for me now as they did in that tiny security office thirty years ago. Words betray the thoughts of the author, and
they must always be used cautiously. They
reveal character as well as wisdom and ignorance in equal measures. Because words are my tools, I am always
cognizant of this, and when I see someone’s words detonate in the air around
him, I am reminded again how dangerous words can be.
After the uniformed
cops showed up to take the kid and the evidence away, I ask Robert about his
words. “Why should you have a problem
with one black man calling another one out?” he said.
His glare intimidated
me. “I was just uncomfortable,” I
replied, feeling ashamed for questioning him, even though I feel now that I was
right to do so.
“Get over it.”
Here in Los Angeles,
thirty years later, I don’t think I ever will.
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