I Am Reminded of When A Cop Pointed at Loaded Gun at Me When I was 12

You want to know why I had to face down the barrel of a cop's gun as a child. Read this story to fiind out.

I loved Cops and Robbers when I was a kid.

It was a game that my next door neighbor and I used to play together while in the midst of the nineteen-eighties, our formative years.  It was during those years that the bombastic cop movies and television shows reigned, in which charismatic, lantern jawed, and testosterone fueled men--usually white men--spent the better part of the movie/television show meting out hard justice to evil doers with 45s, 22s, and 38s-that’s guns if you didn’t know what those numbers  referred to. My personal favorite shows/movies were T.J Hooker, Die Hard, and Lethal Weapon.  

My neighbor and I were impressionable twelve and eleven year old kids then, but we of course knew that those gun toting cops on television and in the movies were merely actors who were using fake firearms to vanquish the robbers. This knowledge did not stop us from idolizing and emulating the actions performed by these thespians in their films.

We played Cops and Robbers as much as we could during the school year, skulking about the neighborhood with fake guns in our hands, chasing, hiding, and shooting at each other with imaginary bullets  in the evenings and on the weekends. God, it was so much fun to play!  After the school year ended, with the summer days fending off the onset of the night until 9:00 pm or so, Cops and Robbers become an everyday and hours long occurrence.

 

It was during the afternoon of one of those summer vacation days that I was awakened from a boredom induced stupor by three knocks on the living room door. I immediately knew who it was that was rapping on my door, and said a silent prayer of thanks for his interruption.  Summer vacations were a necessity, but there was not that many things for a twelve year old kid to do to pass the time in the eighties, apart from hanging out with the neighborhood kids and reading a book.  And who wanted to read a book during summer vacation?

My father opened the door.  Standing on the edge of my family’s porch was the chubby faced, bespectacled child of our next-door neighbor. His name was Kyle. “Is it all right for Eze to come outside and play?” asked the chubby faced boy, looking hopeful. 

I was practically on my way out the door before my father gave his consent.

Kyle’s parents had purchased one of the few houses in the neighborhood that was without a vestibule. So the two of us gathered together on the slab of concrete that preceded the doorway to his house, where we would decide which one of us would get the pistol; we both wanted the pistol because it was the freshest of the choices that were available.  A subsequent flip of the coin meant that Kyle would be awarded the coveted pistol, while I was saddled with the worn and chaffed machine gun.

The rules for Cops and Robbers were few. A player was “killed” when an opponent, who was usually within earshot, “shot” you with his gun. And we had to give each other enough time to find hiding places before the game officially begun. Kyle and I would give each other twenty seconds to find a spot to lurk on this day.

The game was usually played within the confines of our block--Xanthia Street. But my desire to win the game on this day propelled me on until I reached the next block"Xenia Street.  I was so pleased with myself. Kyle would have never have suspected that I would expand the zone of war onto the next city street.  I would remain on Xenia Street until I thought he would run out of patience, and then expose himself to an ambush.  And then would I make my way back onto my block and spring my trap.

After about fifteen minutes of lying in wait, I emerged from my hiding place, the yard bush in front of the corner house on Xenia Street.  After a quick reconnaissance of the battlefield, I surmised that the coast was clear, and began to traverse the adjacent yards of the Xenia homeowners.

The sun’s rays were beating down on me, causing sweat to trickle down my face, back, and abdomen.  My shirt stuck to the sweat on my chest, my slick underpants were sliding down my bottom, and my underarms were musky. My throat was parched, as I would have welcomed a cup of water to quench my thirst. But those were concerns that I had to push to the periphery of my mind. I had a job to do. And the heat and the sweat were not going to stop me from achieving my ultimate goal: killing the police officer, or my friend in this case.

I crouched down low as I made my way back to my street. I gripped my gun tight. Everything was quiet save for a slight wind and the slow rumble of the car engine behind me.  A few more steps and the car was upon me.  And then the engine stopped rumbling. I turned my head towards the direction of the car and I immediately knew that I was being hunted. 

The police officer exited his car, drawing his gun from his holster. He rested both of his arms on top of his cruiser, gripping the gun tightly with both of his hands. His forearms were tense, and he had trained the muzzle of the gun on me! Fear flooded my bloodstream, freezing me right where I was, for it was only thing that I could think to do.

“Stay right where you are,” he said. “Don’t move.” 

I was already frozen and stone cold.  I wasn’t going anywhere, although my knees felt as if they were going to buckle beneath me.

“Listen to me.  I want you to place the gun on the ground.  Do it slowly,” he said.

It took almost all that I had to move my limbs, but I was able to will myself to comply.  I bent down, and gently placed the gun on the sidewalk. Then I stoop straight, with my hands raised in the air. I could not breathe.   

He inhaled a breath. “Good,” he said, still wary.  “Now lay down on the ground and spread your arms out from your sides. Do that slowly too.”

I did what he asked of me.

I was lying face down on the pavement, but I could hear and feel his footsteps coming toward me. My heart was pounding the whole time, and I was resisting the urge to empty the contents of my bladder right then and there.

He reached down and grabbed for the gun.  

A few agonizing seconds passed.

“All right. You can stand up now.”

And then I was able to breathe again. The fear was beginning to ebb, the warmth was returning to my limbs, replacing the freezing cold.  I got to my feet, with a tepid assurance that I was probably going to get out of this situation alive. I was still in shock though, still trembling from it.

I snuck a look up at the officer’s face. It was pensive as he examined the gun.  I wondered why this policeman reacted so severely to a little boy with a toy gun.

The lantern jawed police officer was still working with the fake gun when he said, “There should be a red circle on the muzzle of this gun.  You should get one of those for the next time.” And with that he handed me the gun, got into his police cruiser, and drove off without leaving me with an apology. That would be the last time that I would ever play Cops and Robbers with anyone.

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Life went on after that, and I buried the memories and trauma of that day as the years passed.  I graduated from high school, enrolled and graduated from multiple universities, secured a job in the health services industry, and voted for the first black president-the man who will always be my president. My near death experience three decades prior had not gotten in the way of that progress.  

Then came the highly publicized murders of seventeen year old Trevon Martin in Florida, eighteen year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri, seventeen year old Lacquan McDonald in Chicago, twelve year old preteen Tamir Rice in Cleveland Ohio, twenty-one year old Freddie Gray in Baltimore, and so many others who were murdered at the behest of law enforcement.  These were all young black boys, who were loved by the families and their communities, and all seemingly with long lives ahead of them.  But each of those lives would slowly ebb away from prostrate bodies that had been plugged with bullets.

After learning of these unjustified shootings of young black men and boys by the state, the memories from my encounter with that policeman came back to me like a flood; the humiliation, the unforgiving concrete, and the abject and paralyzing fear.  And now I begin and end each day with the same statement: “that could have been me”. One wrong move and I would have ended up prostrate on the street, body riddled with bullet holes, my blood leaking onto the sidewalk.  But I’m not dead. I’ve been able to live a productive life, and I believe that I have many more decades left to live. But that could have been me. The deaths of forty-three year old Eric Gardner and twenty-eight year old Sandra Bland makes it clear that it could still be me.

As I write this, I’m asking myself why I was ultimately spared.  What was the reason? Was it because the officer who confronted me some twenty-eight years ago better trained than the officers in Cleveland, Chicago, and Baltimore? Is there anything that I did that stayed the police officer’s hand?  Was I less imposing than Tamir Rice, and a therefore a less intimidating twelve-year kid? Is it that town that I lived in? Did the universe stand in the way? Was it a confluence of these issues?   Because I want to replicate whatever it was that saved me and put it an infinite number of jars and pass them out to young people of color everywhere.