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I was in Bed Bath and Beyond in #JerseyCity and witnessed a heartbreaking situation that illustrates the need to reallocate funds from the police to social services.
A woman asked me to help her find a certain color hair dye. While I searched she told me she was dying. I couldn’t find the dye, so she thanked me and went to the counter to ask if they had it.
A few minutes later I hear blood-curdling screams coming from the front of the store. I grab what I need and make my way to the register to find that the screams were coming from the woman I helped.
The manager of the store tells her that she needs to get out or she’s calling the police to get her out. It’s clear now that the woman is unwell and likely food and house insecure. I also notice she’s not wearing shoes. She is in her 70s, roughly.
The manager says the woman has no money to pay. Another bystander and I say we will pay for whatever she needs, just please don’t call the police. Meanwhile the woman continues to scream and wail uncontrollably.
The bystander grabs her items and pays for them at a separate register while I beg the manager not to call the police (she’s already on the phone with police.) The other bystander and I start yelling about mental health and how times are so difficult please don’t involve police
The manager hangs up the phone and has a breakdown. Who else can she call? She’s also exhausted, at risk, and working a stressful ass job. It’s not her fault.
I can’t help imagine the ideal scenario in my head. One where an elderly Latine woman isn’t wandering around without shoes and socks. Where a crisis counselor or social worker or mental health professional is as available as police, who do nothing to de-escalate the situation.
I walk outside to comfort the manager, who is on her knees crying. But you know what she does? She takes a moment, gets up, and starts asking the woman if she has somewhere to go. If she’s okay. If she’s safe. Retail workers are incredible. It’s so hard, for everyone.
I also know where that woman goes if the police come to get her: to the psychiatric holding facility at JCMC. A place I’ve been held against my will and without my knowledge. And it’s fucking awful.
I think about how eventually the entire Shop Rite plaza is set be torn down and replaced with luxury high rises. What then? What becomes of our most vulnerable?
We ask for a CCRB, for affordable housing ordinances, for the astronomical police budget to be defunded so that those funds can be allocated to creating support networks of inclusion and accountability. So folks with mental health challenges don’t end up in cop cars, or dead.
And you better fucking believe in 2021 we will do everything in our democratic power to vote out those in our City who continue to stand in the way of moral progress to uphold white supremacy and patriarchy.
