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I was detained Tuesday while doing my job, reporting the news, right here in America. A few people have been asking me what I think about that, if I’m OK, was I “being a bad girl”, etc.
A brief response re: trauma. (My view, not the paper’s.) https://twitter.com/abgutman/status/1275538805450330113
A brief response re: trauma. (My view, not the paper’s.) https://twitter.com/abgutman/status/1275538805450330113
Whether it’s right or wrong for the mayor and managing director, instead of sending a staffer to accept a letter from constituents with strong (and, yes, loud) views on a city budget, to have sent police — not Civil Affairs, but COUNTERTERRORISM— is not for me to say.
It does, however, seem to illustrate a point protesters and many academics/experts have been making: Police have become the first response to virtually every situation, whether it involves crime or not, whether an armed officer is needed or not, helpful or not.
And, when you have police ridiculing fellow citizens—and if officers who were repeatedly warned I was a loudmouth reporter did it to me, you can only imagine what others get —you have a policing problem.
For example: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-defender-association-money-bail-advocate-preentry-police-20200313.html%3foutputType=amp
For example: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-defender-association-money-bail-advocate-preentry-police-20200313.html%3foutputType=amp
And when you do not adequately warn people to leave or you actively prevent them from leaving, and then you arrest them for failure to disperse, you have a civil rights problem.
And when you have members of the public telling female journalists they deserve to be unjustly arrested—even after the mayor has admitted it was wrong—they must have been “a bad girl”, or they are criminals, you have an empathy problem (overlaid with an obvious misogyny problem).
(A side note/rebuttal: no, asking to interview the building manager about security protocols doesn’t make me a collaborator with protesters. No, being handcuffed does not make me a criminal.)
The real point of all this is: I’m not going to parse whether being pulled backward down two flights of stairs faster than you can find your footing is being “dragged” — but I did not have any faith that these policemen who were vocally mocking me would keep me from falling.
I suppose I’m not trained to say whether forcing someone who is trying her best not to resist into handcuffs and then all but carrying her away amounts to unnecessary force.
But it was the most violent thing that has ever happened to me.
It is traumatic.
But it was the most violent thing that has ever happened to me.
It is traumatic.
It’s traumatic even though I knew it was likely a civil case that would be resolved within hours. As a society, though, we are willing to accept this trauma as normal for some people, especially Black or poor people—even when they don’t commit crimes. https://www.inquirer.com/news/inq/probation-parole-pennsylvania-philadelphia-criminal-justice-system-violations-poverty-20191024.html
Yesterday Terrance Lewis, who was locked up 21 years before being exonerated, texted me his outrage. (BTW, he has still not received any compensation.) 21 YEARS. I can barely sleep, after 10 minutes in custody. I cannot even imagine how that pain lives in his mind and his body.
What I do personally understand now, is that we—journalists, white people, people who have never been stopped or frisked—are not close to addressing how wildly traumatic it is for people to be unjustly deprived of their liberty, by officials who are all but beyond accountability.
That lack of understanding also obviously extends to city government from the fact that my phone/e-mail conversations with mayoral and police spokespeople yesterday did not include a mention of this well-publicized nonsense. Not even a passive-voiced “Sorry that happened to you.”
If we care to learn from any of this, I would say an important lesson is restraint. Let’s not inflict trauma casually. Maybe start with the least aggressive response, the least force, rather than most.
