So I'm sitting on the floor in the hallway of a friend's house in San Francisco's Noe Valley, en route to the UK. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and I'm happy to be back in my city. The only thing is there's a swarm of police officers outside and they've got huge guns, the biggest I've ever seen, trained on the house next door.
At first I think it's a drug raid, but really have no idea. All I know is I was answering emails and heard people outside yelling. I walked to the window, pulled back the curtain and found myself looking at six or seven police officers in full gear, each with a semi-automatic weapon pointed at the window. I backed away slowly, afraid any sudden move could turn the guns my way.
I heard the door to the flat at the back of the house open and ran to tell the woman who lives there with her husband and three-month old baby girl not to go outside. She wasn't fazed. It's a couple down the street, she said. A messed-up husband, messed-up wife, and messed-up teenage son. There's gang stuff that goes on, too, she said. But today it's probably the family.
I inched back to the window in time to hear a neighbor ask the police if they had finally found Bin Laden. Three white guys strolled down the street. Some guys with dreadlocks texted on their cells. A guy who looked Samoan took video with his phone. An African-American woman watched from her steps without so much as a flinch.
I felt I was in some kind of alternate universe. Was I watching successful community policing, or a troubling acceptance of a militarized environment? I mean really, was I the only one who wanted to go hide on the bathroom floor?
Sadly, perhaps unfairly, when I see police officers I usually think of Rodney King, Michael Steward, Amadou Diallo. I think about female inmates brutally raped by prison guards. I think about Michelle Obama telling CNN Barack could get shot going to the gas station.
I think about what I'm going to tell my son about the police when he's old enough for it to matter.
I will have to tell him the truth: he should expect and demand the police protect him. He should know they may not. I will tell him the history of police brutality in our country, and of the increasingly likelihood of an even more militarized state. I will talk to him about countries where guns are illegal. He will have a passport.
I will do my best to preserve my son's sense of hope and wonderment about the world, his sense of safety. I will tell him he must always, always, obey the law. I will tell him there are and have always been lawyers who fight for those who have endured police brutality.
I will tell him he must be especially cautious of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; it can cost him his life. I will repeat this at different times in his life, moments when I think he may be able to hear it, and moments when I know he cannot. I will love him as hard and fiercely as I can so he will know the difference between healthy affection and dangerous liaisons.
I will teach him to step away from the window.
What do you think about when you see police officers, and what will you teach your kids?
