What’s so unusual about police acting stupidly?
Al’s Loupe
What’s so unusual about police acting stupidly?
By Alvaro F. Fernandez
alfernandez@the-beach.net
In the fall of 2004, I received a telephone call from my wife. I was home. It was about 9 at night. She sounded terrified. She was surrounded by three police cruisers, she told me.
“What happened?” I asked. “I took a red light at the corner of 26th,” she said. “I’ll be right down; don’t panic,” I told her.
I ran through the hallway and pushed the button to the elevator. Thankfully one arrived immediately. I headed out the front door to the corner. There they were, four cops outside their police cruisers — lights flashing. From afar it looked as if they’d caught the bad guy and were getting ready to take him in. Blue, red and white lights flashed. The crackling, shrieking sound of police radios broke through the dark and usually silent night.
“What’s the problem officer?” I asked meekly, hoping not to make what appeared to be a bad situation worse. “Who are you?” I was asked. I explained I was the husband of the person inside the car who had called me terrified. “We live right here,” I pointed to the building to my right. I approached her car, opened the door, got inside and asked Patricia what had happened. She was crying and shaking. She was also about four months pregnant with my daughter.
To make a long story short, on the corner where we live in Miami Beach, the red light at one time used to take no less than 10 minutes to change. It was not unusual for most everyone to take that light. In the case of Patricia, she was coming home from work, she was not feeling well, and she also had to go to the bathroom. Feeling she was going to pee in the car, she took the light. As she turned to enter the parking lot a cop car flashed his lights right behind her and told her to pull out of the parking lot. She did. Seconds later two more cop cars arrived. Now it looked like a scene from a TV cop show.
Patricia immediately admitted to taking the light. She asked the police officer if he would please write her a ticket as quickly as possible, she was pregnant and had to pee badly. Her pregnancy was obvious. The cop asked for her license and registration and headed over to talk to his buddies. When I arrived at the scene, they seemed to be enjoying themselves, having a laugh at someone’s expense.
“She’s pregnant,” I told the cop after hearing the story from Patricia. They all stared at me. “Officers, please, can you give her the ticket so that she may go to the bathroom. She’s also very nervous.” One of the cops answered me. “Go home or get back in her car,” he said. I did as I was told, but now fuming. Minutes went by and the laughing continued. The policemen seemed to be enjoying themselves — at the expense of a pregnant woman. I didn’t see anyone hurrying to write a ticket. They seemed to be discussing something that had occurred the previous evening. I opened my window and this time with a not so nice tone asked what was taking so long. They gave me a menacing look and one approached the car and told me to keep quiet. More time went by. “What the hell is going on…” I now asked rudely. (My language became a little saltier at that point.) They threatened to arrest me.
No less than 20 minutes after I had arrived one of the officers handed Patricia two tickets. I took her to our apartment. Made sure she was OK and headed back down. The officer had given her an extra ticket for driving without a seat belt. Patricia always wears her belt. She had removed it to open the door and reach out to open the garage gate.
I approached the cops, now three. I confronted the one who had given her the ticket and explained that he had made a mistake on the one for the seat belt. He did not respond very nicely. He told me to take it to court. We exchanged words. The other two joined him, one threatened to kick my ass (which he would have, he was big). The third one looked at me with a look of disdain I cannot forget and told me that “one more word” and he’d arrest me.
Nothing ever came of this. But I recount the story because I was surprised at the uproar when President Obama said that Cambridge police acted stupidly in the case of the African American Harvard professor arrested inside his own home. Seriously… what’s so unusual about police acting stupid?
I will never forget reading a book by Edna Buchanan, a former Miami Herald police beat reporter who received a Pulitzer for her work covering Miami police. Buchanan used to say that there was nobody better than a good cop and no one worse than a bad one. Over the years I’ve seen good ones. But too often I’ve seen the bad ones.
By the way, although they would have gotten a good and cruel laugh at her expense, Patricia never gave them the pleasure. Nearly bursting and in tears, she did not pee in her pants.
