I'm writing this not to write about myself, but to give some perspective to the recent report by the U.S. Department of Justice on the conduct of the Baltimore City Police Department. It's nothing new and it's not only about African-Americans, nor does their conduct only effect African-Americans. It poisoned the entire population.
Forty-six years ago, in 1970, I was a twenty-five year old with long hair and a big beard, basking in the Counter-Culture, finding out I could write, working for HARRY the "underground" paper of record in Baltimore, Maryland.
It was a glorious existence being the dashing young hippie journalist, newly unmarried with hippie chicks abounding, with something to say to the world which also supplied me with endless causes to write about; The Vietnam War, civil rights, drugs, music. It was as if we had invented it, which we certainly did not, but even knowing that on some level, there were lots of evils to fight and I was just the guy to take them on.
The Baltimore City Police Department noticed.
I was arrested four times because of that work. Once at the notorious "Flower Mart Riot" when George Schnabel, a high-ranking uniformed BPD official spotted me taking notes and pointed me out to be arrested for disorderly conduct, thus ending my reporting for the day (he thought). Of course my story didn't stop when I was escorted into the paddy wagon and taken off to jail. Released on recog and had the charges stetted.
I was also arrested later that summer when we got wind of a drug bust, cleaned out the apartment many of the HARRY folks were living in, went to bed and were awakened by a sizable squad of cops who were disappointed in not having found any drugs. So whatever drugs they presented as evidence must have been brought in by them.
At the same time, HARRY's photography editor, a man named Glenn Ehasz was, in fact a Baltimore City Police officer. Not an informant, but an actual member of the BPD. We all thought he acted like a cop, but other than pot and LSD (for the most part) we weren't breaking any (other) laws and we had strong beliefs that those drug laws were wrong. There were (and still are) suspicions that Ehasz set us up for that bust. He later told us that he prevented the other cops (whom he knew) from breaking down the doors and smashing the walls to bits as well as destroying the rest of the contents of the apartment.
No proof of that. Several of us were convicted but served no time.
It was customary, from time to time, for a marked BPD car to sit across the street from where we were all living and wait for us to come out and get in our car, wait for us to pull away, turn on their flashing light, pull us over for a "spot check," and keep us for a half-hour or however long they felt necessary to complete their harassment duties.
But they never shot us or killed us.
It was a time of real shooting and killing of members of the Black Panther Party, not in Baltimore, but in Chicago, among other places. Several of us spent a night on the front porch of the Baltimore Black Panther party at the height of it because there were rumors that the PBD were going to attack them as the Chicago police had done when they killed Fred Hampton. Nothing happened that night.
Even though I had attended Morgan State (then) College, what I now know as white privilege prevented me from knowing that what I was to experience from the BPD two years after I left school was something that was the daily experience of Black folks.
The powers in Baltimore did a bad job of integrating city schools. They just thew us all together. I daresay that many had never interacted with another person of a different race. We muddled through, made some friends, got in some fights; those of us white folks who understood the tiniest bit about the emerging civl rights struggle were eager to make friends, as best we could. All the while trying to fight through the racism of our parents. My father once told me he was going to see some boxing matches "to see the nigger get beat." My mother tried to warn me about the evils of Little Richard and the creeping menace of Black folks moving in.
Indeed, white flight was so swift that in one year, all the white people who had been living in the houses in my Forest Park neighborhood had been replaced by Black folks.
As much as I tried to embrace African-American culture and learn more about my new classmates, none of them ever mentioned being abused by the police. Not a single one.
As the years went by, however, and Baltimore became an African-American city with a mostly African-American government I noticed that I was treated differently. Sullen looks and outright hostility to my middle-aged whitness on a daily basis. I figured, well ok, this is what white people have wrought, slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, imprisonment, housing discrimination, white flight and all the other accouterments of racism. I didn't deserve it, however. Wasn't I the guy who stayed all night on the Panthers' front porch? Wasn't I the guy who was one of four white people at Morgan?
What I still didn't know was how much of this was tied into how the Baltimore City Police Department made the lives of hundreds of thousands a constant hell.
Yes, I will admit that moving to Portland was a great relief from MY daily dose of the reactions of Black folks to me, a target for their reaction to their mistreatment. About a week after my arrival, I overheard a conversation between a group of Blacks and whites at a restaurant. Everyone was smiling and open to each other. Wow. Is that what it's like here? What a nice change!
So now I know that the institutional racism of the Baltimore City Police Department has been exposed, their abuse on a daily basis, over decades and the natural reaction to that abuse by those being abused poisoned relations between races. I got shit on because they got shit on, helping to drive a wedge between Black folks and white folks, between me and them, them and me.
That's the legacy that lives today.
I haven't been back in years. I was hoping it's better. Not according to the Department of Justice.
Slight update: Baltimore City Police Department being represented by Neo-Nazi lawyer over wrongful arrest of Black man.
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