Watch and Pray: When the Police Action Comes to Your Neighborhood

I returned home from a very moving Good Friday service, organized my music for Easter, and turned in for the night.

Somewhere around two o’clock in the morning, I was awakened by the sound of yelling from the park kitty-corner from our corner house.

“Dang rowdy teens,” I thought, actually smiling to myself, and ventured to the window to take a peek out.

A glare of headlights was coming up my street, and there were police calling orders to a man who was standing in the shadow of an oak tree beloved by every kid in the neighborhood. The man seemed to be trying to melt into the bark of the tree and become invisible.

This was not a dream, folks; this was an unexpected drama. No more smile for me.

Officers called out to the man. “We’re police. We’re here to help. If you can hear us, please answer or put your hands up.”

The man did not respond, for whatever reason. I could not actually see him, as he was behind the tree, and there was an SUV partially blocking my view.

Suddenly, the words of the Taizé chant, which I had been singing only hours before, played through my mind:

Stay with me; remain here with me. Watch and pray. Watch and pray.

So, that’s what I did.

***

This is the kind of scene we have all too frequently read about in the news paper or in electronic media – mainly because the results have been horrific. True confession: I am a contract transcriptionist for a major police department in the area, but not for the town in which I live. Because I have transcribed descriptions of scenes just like this many, many times, I thought I would take you, the reader, through this experience with me…

Because, what happened in my real life witnessing, and often what happens in those IAD (Internal Affairs Department) cases that are OIS cases (Officer Involved Shootings), is really textbook, although the outcomes vary. The scenarios are taught in police academies throughout the nation, and are handled in a fairly standard way. These scenarios are drilled endlessly during police academy. And I do not know if this is standard to every police department, but the department for which I transcribe interviews has mandatory extra, bi-annual training in such things as Use of Force, Tactical Training, Robbery Apprehension, Crisis Intervention (for substance abuse, domestic violence, gang violence, etc.) shooting range recertification every six months, and I could go on. I can honestly say that officers are rigorously trained and the training is ongoing throughout the career.

So, in these early morning hours, I was seeing unfold, in three-dimensional reality, the kind of story I’ve been transcribing for years. 

And, at this time, I felt the need to Watch and Pray, to hold space for the best possible outcome.

***

It all begins with a call for service. In this case, someone called 911 and reported seeing a man with a gun near the park. I don't know who that person was, but I heard this fact from one of the officers on scene, the one who was trying to get the suspect to comply with verbal commands.

[Note: Verbal commands are the second level of the commonly understood Use of Force Hierarchy. The first level is Officer Demeanor (open stance, ready stance, defensive stance, calmness, agitation, etc.). The third level is Physical Control (escort holds, pain/pressure compliance, passive counter measures, active counter measures, etc.). The fourth level, Serious Physical Control, is mostly not allowed in our local jurisdictions (such as carotid control holds). The fifth level of control is use of Impact and Less Lethal Weapons (such as pepper spray, baton or even taser). The sixth level of control is, of course, Deadly Force.] 

  

***

“We’re police and we’re here to help. Someone called us and said there was a man with a gun. Please let us know you can hear and understand; put your hands up.”

Still, the man did not answer. Thinking that he might actually have a hearing problem, the officer hit the switch on the patrol car P.A. and repeated the command a second time, followed by a third time.

Then, I heard a male officer yell frantically, “Don’t put your hands to your waistband!!! We need to see your hands!!!! GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!!!!” I could not see what the officers were seeing, but that seemed to me like an escalation, rather than a de-escalation. Observation 1: I know men who are constantly adjusting their trousers, whether or not they are wearing a belt; this is a habitual and self-conscious action. Observation 2: An officer yelling such a statement might raise the adrenaline level not just of the subject, but of everyone in the area, and possibly falsely cue other officers who have drawn weapons to shoot.

Next, a patrol car silently rolled up on the cross street, and an officer, holding a revolver at low ready (this is with the muzzle pointed downward toward the ground), exited and was soon crawling through my neighbor’s bushes to see if he could get a bead on the subject. Two other officers with long rifles also came into view.

I still heard no word from the suspect, who seemed to be trying to melt into the bark of the oak tree he stood beside.

Eventually, officers from the direction the commands came from deployed riot shields and advanced toward the suspect. Words were exchanged at closer range, and finally, the man who did not appear to move with an aggressive demeanor [in IAD interviews, the subject/suspect’s demeanor is discussed, as well as that of the officers’] was either physically detained or complied with commands and seated himself at the curb. (This seated position is often referred to as a subject detention.)  I did not see whether the subject was handcuffed or not, at that time.

Next, one officer peeled off from the pack. That officer took the role of Primary Officer, conducted an investigation by asking questions of the detainee, such as name, date of birth, address, etc. Other officers advanced into the fenced park and, shining their flashlights all around, did a sweep of the entire area, to make sure there were no other subjects hiding in the park. They might also have made a cursory examination of the garbage cans and public restrooms. This is all standard procedure.

After an all clear is given on an area that has been sweeped in this manner, the officers come move back and form a tighter perimeter around the subject, while the subject is being questioned. The partner of the primary officer usually runs information about the subject through dispatch to see if there are any wants or warrants for the individual. If there are, that is the “Go Directly To Jail” card. The detainee is then cuffed and formally taken into custody, is now under arrest, and is taken to the nearest police station for formal booking. It will fall to the primary officer on scene to write an incident report, and the subject may be transported to a temporary holding cell or directly to county jail.

***

In the case I was witnessing live, the perimeter around this one man, who the beam of a street light revealed to be a man of color, was quite large, owing to the large number of officers (I counted nine, but there must have been more. One of my neighbors, who lives with a more direct line of sight on the area in question, counted eight patrol cars), and I was struck suddenly by the fact that all of these officers were white. It took this incident to make me aware that, although I live in a place that is highly diverse, where over twenty languages are represented in our public schools, our police department does not represent that diversity beyond the inclusion of a small percentage of women.

So, here is this non-white male subject, surrounded by a sea of white, armed to the teeth law enforcement personnel. I can only imagine the reason why he did not move or speak during the early part of this episode is because he thought his life might be over in the next few minutes, so why bother protesting or speaking or moving or not moving or, really, doing anything at all?

***

Now that there was a “secured perimeter” all officers present at the scene who were not the primary officers were just standing around. Their vehicles were all idling, sending up noxious fumes.

I had the sense that this was a weird sort of law enforcement version of “piling on.” I mean, how many police officers does it take to subdue and take into custody one unarmed man? The neighbor I contacted conveyed to me an opinion that surely all officers on the duty roster for this night must have rolled to this scene. Why were so many officers there?

Were they there to police one another? Or were they there to “get a piece of the action”?

The primary officer continued to interview the subject. From where I was, I could not hear much. I think I heard the man say he had a knife among his belongings. I can not be sure of anything else I heard.

***

Finally, the interviewing of the subject was over. The police were probably unaware that there were at least a few witnesses monitoring this situation.

The conclusion arrived in the form of two fire trucks, both superfluous (one appeared to be a gigantic tractor-drawn arial ladder truck – why? What purpose would that serve in this situation?) and the last vehicle to appear on scene was a paramedic unit.

Evidently, the subject was considered a candidate for medical and or psychiatric observation and/or treatment. The subject was, therefore, released from police custody into the care of the paramedic unit. A paramedic in a white shirt looked, to me, embarrassed to be parting this sea of police presence with his colleagues.

In the jurisdiction for which I do transcription, when a subject is released from police custody, no incident report is made. Why is that? Because no arrest was made. I do not know if that procedure is the same in this jurisdiction where I live. There will be a record of the call for service, and that information is often made public in the local newspaper or on-line. This is done both in the name of transparency, but also as a public relations measure; “we’re working hard for you so you'll fund us.”

The subject was given a cursory evaluation by the paramedics, on scene, then strapped to a gurney. The gurney was loaded into the unit, which was the first vehicle to depart the scene.

Eventually, all the loud, noxious vehicles and their operators went away.

I returned to bed, physically and emotionally drained by this strange event.

***

I can appreciate that an abundance of caution and care was being taken, but I wonder at what I consider to be an over-abundance, and how easily abundance of caution could have become (and I hesitate to use the word, but it is so apt) overkill.

This experience was, to me, a macabre spectacle, bordering on theater of the absurd.

I am extremely grateful that the subject was driven away, alive, to receive, I hope, a new lease on life, rather than to a morgue. I pray that this person will receive the care and real help that can make the difference and light a path of future for this individual.

Questions I would ask of my local police chief and mayor:

·      Why were so many officers deployed to this scene?

·      Why were so many fire vehicles deployed to this non-fire, non-emergency?

·      What would the tipping point have been to change this possible felony stop from an organized, by the book procedure, into a chaotic shoot-out? There were too many law enforcement personnel present. When one officer screamed, “Don’t put go for your waistband,” that could have well have cued  a hail of bullets.

·      What is the point of deploying two fire trucks and a paramedic unit when the later is all that was necessary? This is a waste of resources and personnel that probably should have been patrolling elsewhere. Surely, there can be better dispatch and scene coordination.

Perhaps more questions will occur to me later.

***

On December 1, 2017, officers of the San Francisco Police Department were dispatched in pursuit of a carjacking suspect, allegedly driving a stolen California State Lottery van in the Bayview District. The suspect drove into dead end, exited the vehicle and appear to rush at the stopping primary pursuit vehicle. One of the officers in that car fired a single shot with his service revolver. The suspect was killed instantly.

I relate this story, which I remember reading about in the newspaper and is a matter of public record, because it is the story of a single officer firing a single bullet at a single suspect. Point number 1: It only takes one bullet to kill someone.  Point number 2: It took a great deal of self-control on the part of the officer to fire only a single shot; the trigger on the typical SIG Sauer service revolver is a DAK (double action) trigger system, based on weight of the pull on the trigger.

When police deploy their weapons in deadly force, they are trained to aim and shoot at only one location, the rectangle that represents your central body mass. If they shoot, it will not be at your foot, your leg, your arm or your shoulder. It will be at your body mass.

***

This thing happened in my neighborhood.  This thing could happen in your neighborhood.

If it does, what will you do?

I hope you will Watch and Pray for the best possible outcome.

I also hope you will question anything that looks wrong, and report anything that seems really out of whack to an appropriate agency, perhaps your local District Attorney’s office. 

DO NOT insert yourself into a danger zone, and DO NOT EVER interfere in a police action. I realized later that being an observer was taking somewhat of a risk; a barrage of gunfire could easily have sent bullets into nearby homes. If you can observe safely, and feel okay doing so, fine. Otherwise RETREAT to as SAFE A POSITION AS YOU CAN.

___
1. 23 Police Officers Fire 377 Bullets at Two Men With Zero Guns
http://blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1462246167395686511#allposts

2. Why Do Police Shoot So Many Times?
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/03/police_shootings_nopd_jpso_eri.html

Final Walk - A Good Friday Meditation

After the dust and palm frond waves,
no steps seem more daunting,
even though each one forward paves,
despite bullies and faithless taunting,
a way, of being and living, that saves.

Servant leadership nixes vaunting
whose lie of pride and wealth behaves
so conspicuously mean and flaunting
— but all who would deny, poor knaves,
might ultimately be left empty and wanting
once redeeming love frees all of us slaves.

Good Friday is a day intended introspection rather than guilt. A newspaper headline about this day might read, “Man Acting Suspiciously Executed in Name of Empire,” and that brings it forward a few thousand years, doesn’t it?

I mean, why kill someone like the man from Nazareth? Why not sentence him to jail? After all, he did advise people that they should give Caesar what was due.

Well, it is all about the meta-message, and that was in part about upending the social strata. But that wasn’t the whole story.

Jesus tried to communicate to people that nothing about their lives was inevitable, unless they allowed it to be so. Oppression at the hands of functionaries of the Empire was the least of the difficulty. Tribalism and taboos; orthodoxy and the inevitable hypocrisy that accompanies that way of being and thinking; the creation and maintenance of ghettos—and by that I don’t just mean the ghettos that are imposed to shut people in (those are very real and devastating), but the ones we willingly create to shut people out. Jesus was trying to let us know that the fastest way to redress societal ills is not to blame, condemn, and fight, but to mitigate, ameliorate and serve.

Said another way, whenever we complain, act out or wait for someone else to solve a problem, we’re not writing ourselves into the solution; further, we are diminishing ourselves. This is not at all to say that organization and protest can be minimized to “complaint” or “acting out.” Jesus and his followers were construed to be rabble-rousers, but when they went into communities, their intent was to serve, and serve they did.

Some tried to say that what Jesus and his followers were doing was illegal, and if there was indeed a real trial, Jesus would have been convicted based on court legalities. In truth, what Jesus suggested is that to do the right thing, we are sometimes forced to act outside human law, especially where it is constructed to ensnare and weaken people in ways that serve no positive societal purpose (a real example: A court demanded a million dollars in bail for the release of a transient accused of arson. What purpose did that serve? There was no one to come forward for the man; the bail might even have been as low as $10K, and this man would have been stuck in jail.) or that are divisive toward the community.

When I reflect on the gospel message, I see that Jesus is saying we cannot use “the system” as an excuse. If “the system” needs fixing, we have to do it ourselves, even if our DIY is a “work around.” The can is kicked forward because the task of dismantling and reassembling the Tower of Babel is too daunting. So, what happens in the meanwhile? Nothing? Status quo? Complacency? All we like sheep, awaiting a new shepherd?

No. The message is clear and irrefutable: There is no easy way out of the thicket of wrongs and the legalese of inequity, but love finds the way. Love can only find the way if we have compassion and if we truly care about and are empowered toward just outcomes. This is such an outcome driven world, and yet so few people invest in the good outcome unless “good outcome” means wealth and status.

Jesus took the final walk trying to awaken us to a desire for the “right outcome.” If we want “right outcomes,” we need to invest self into the equation. Denials and excuses don’t cut it in the Kingdom of Heaven, which is here, inside each of us, and all around us in this life we are living, right now. The charge to “love thy neighbor” is a call to be and do the controversial (loudly or even secretly, if necessary), to buck the system, to do the right thing, the just thing, the very best thing.

Don’t let the dream die. Go in peace, my friends, to love and to serve.

© 2018 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

The World's Worth

“The world is my country; my religion is to do good.”

~Thomas Paine

The World’s Worth

There is no thicket of identities
in this ebb and flow of crowds;
one is at once unique,
while also each and every,
as in the sharing of aspirations,
as in the dreaming of dreams—
we’re all water walking or rolling upright,

moving vertically over a horizontal world,
various mixtures of stardust and desert sand;
but we have yet to fully embrace personhood
as the embodiment of democracy.
What message should we add
to that old corked bottle
we’ll cast onto the oceans of time?
What future there may be
will only be found
where the good person,
in communion with all
others of their ilk,
is the sole expression
of the world’s worth.

© 2018 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

To Be or Not To Be ... Anthropocentric

Are we for or against ourselves? 

Perhaps the better question is: If we are for us, when will we start acting like it?

If the questions above seem outrageous, out there, or confusing, let me pause for a moment to offer some brief foundation on which to pin these questions.

I was born in 1961, in Berkeley, CA, a city known for radicalism and protest, then and now. My parents took us on marches. We belonged to the Co-Op. We participated in early ecological efforts. (If anyone can now remember the 1971 oil spill on San Francisco Bay, my mother took my sister and me on AC Transit to San Francisco, so we could all help in the rescue of birds and beach cleanup. This was a very low-tech process at the time. I remember lots of hay being spread about, to absorb the oil. While the beaches and bay were eventually cleaned, despite the efforts of hundreds of people, many birds perished.) We had family friends who had opted out and gone “off grid” by retreating to communes. My parents were more on the side of opting in.

Being a child of the television era, I was acutely aware of the news. Among my very earliest memories is of watching the funeral of JFK on our small, black and white Motorola portable TV. Time inched forward through strikes, assassinations, War, famine in India and Ethiopia. I knew that a war had been declared, by our President, on poverty in our nation. I knew that the Peace Corps, Red Cross and other groups were actively working to help people in other nations stricken by illness and famine. I knew there was war against illiteracy. Unrest was all around. Sometimes, I did not feel safe, but I always felt that most people were working to make the world a better place for everyone. That is a little about my background and those events that informed my understanding of the world.

Today, I look back and see that the Progressive ideas, which had their roots in three and more generations before my birth, have largely failed. We can look at the history that has been written since and find a few overarching reasons for these failures: Military Industrial Complex and rampant, unregulated Capitalism. Progressivism and citizen activism have been undermined by those moneyed interests that prefer maintaining hegemony over influence and power to partaking of an equal share in human rights and justice.

War to bolster hegemony and claim on resources has cost more lives and more money than could ever be imagined. Unrelenting capitalism has enslaved entire populaces to create and exchange worthless junk, designed for rapid failure, that quickly becomes refuse, littering our world with toxicity that threatens to endanger the health and safety of all living beings.

What few people seem to realize, here in 2018, is that the world economies are no longer tied to nations, but to corporations that wield enough wealth and power to actively avoid the attempts of any governmental body that would control them. My proof of this lies in the movement toward privatization of the security sector, and to some extent in the numerous recent wars/conflicts that seem to have been unilateral manipulations by certain governments, but which have profited corporations engaged in “rebuilding efforts”.

It is apparent to me that nationalities and governments no longer hold the keys to human destiny, and this is why terror organizations and nefarious cyber disruptors are currently so successful.

It is also apparent to me that no one at the top is interested in civilization or social wellbeing.

What shocking things to say!

If only humans could be accused of being anthropocentric! But, alas, we cannot.

If we were truly anthropocentric, we would realize that anthropocentrism is a state that must be cultivated. The principal flaw of capitalism is that it can only survive when people buy. But if the world is populated by a few haves, the rest being have-nots, ultimately means that that having is an endgame. If the captains of capitalism don’t get to work cultivating larger groups of haves (people who will be capable of buying because they have knowledge, jobs and health, affordable housing, adequate access to food and water), the “free-for-all” marketplace will die, along with great swaths of the world’s population.

After that, all that is left is warlord military might à la Mad Max. And then, you capitalists, watch out!

The solution, to my mind, lies in a benevolent anthropocentrism, one that buys into a central notion that to keep the world going, you need smart, cultured, engaged, and empathetic people of all shapes, sizes, colors, ages, genders and cultural affiliations; caring people. Such people know that the earth and all life must be stewarded, and that this cannot be accomplished by stealing, cheating, lying or bullying, but by cooperation toward a common good for everyone and everything. We need to demilitarize the populace. We need to find the root causes of violence, isolation, depression, misanthropy; we need to weed them out by healing, hybridizing and nurturing wellbeing, by loving. We need to dismantle predatory thinking and practices, and replacing them with innovation that breeds life and purpose. We need to cultivate citizenship and personal responsibility that is manifest in every action built from the bottom up, and (as business consultants never tire in speaking of) resonated in the tone from the top.

Evolution, that is I am talking about, folks. We need to evolve. We desperately need to become something we clearly right now are not. We need to become truly human and anthropocentric in the sense that being good to the world around us is the path toward both meeting all our basic needs and providing spiritual fulfillment.

It is a simple idea, in the words of T.S. Eliot, “costing not less than everything.”

Or, as Voltaire has his eponymous hero ultimately declare, “repondit Candide, ‘Oui, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.’”

Blue Moon Blood Moon Eclipse

Wearing a shadow for a covering,
in the coolness of a morning that is not—
for night and day are but a seeming,
guiding that rarest of miracles: vision

—Over this silent music presides the moon,
calling all divine light to rise and water to lie,
and quickening every frozen seed to song
from all measures of waiting slumber.

Such mathematical and unseasonal observances,
of celestial bodies hurtling forward through space,
should swerve and realign misguided churnings
that might trouble a perfect harmonic turn.

In this here and now, wearing a shadow for a covering,
water lies in hushed witness to what eternal moment,
seemingly, is reflected on this still and tensile Bay,

unaware of any unseemly ripple over the fabric of time.

© 2018 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

With A Song in the Heart

Ubi—
            the glare of,
                        —caritas—
            yes, the sun’s benevolent glare
                                    —et amor—
            on her wedding day

birds singing in the trees;
musicians playing and singing;
a song arose in her own heart.

—congregavit nos in unum—
            “we are gathered together”
—simul ergo cum in unum congregemus—
            “as gathered into one body”

behind the glare of the sun
stood an angel aglow with fire,
bearing circlets of rose and lily.

—ne nos mente dividamur—
            “let those who are now joined”
                        —caveamus—
            “not be sundered”

the husband and his brother
deigned to the swim she offered,
according to the song of her heart.

—Exultemus—
            let us Rejoice!
                        for the vision seen
                        for the life given
                        for the love shared

—cantantibus organis—
            for while the music played
            the glare of the sun
            tore open the sky
            broke open her heart
            and the stars flocked like birds
            through its torn veil
            bringing their heavenly songs
            to every open place.

—dum aurora finem daret—
            at the last stroke,
            into the open earth
            her heart sang out,
            pure to the last
—fiat cor meum immaculatum—

—non confundar
            alleluia
            alleluia
—Deus ibi est

            alleluia
            alleluia

© 2017 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

//

Cecilia (patron saint of musicians and poets and venerated in the Roman canon of the mass) is a most unlikely saint from Roman times. No particular miracles are attributed to her, although she was able to convince two men (her new husband and his brother) that she knew an angel; she was martyred because she was a Christian (though, according to legend, was apparently difficult to dispatch); and when her remains were uncovered centuries later, they were incorrupt, to the astonishment of those who discovered them. There are a few quotes attributed to her that are probably derivative of psalms, and not much else is known.

But mythmaking, I believe, always has a basis in truth; there was a person so special that her memory could not be erased from her community, even generations following her death. The basis of truth about Cecilia is perhaps that she sang, and she wanted her song to be for Jesus, for God. Oddly, the root of the name implies blindness; this person’s perception was evidently triggered and opened by music to experience the divine.

That is most likely the miracle.

I have folded words from the hymn “Ubi Caritas,” as well as some the words attributed to Cecilia into this meditation (apologies for any over-simplifications of the Latin on my part):

Ubi caritas et amor – where benevolence and love are

Congregavit nos in unum – we are gathered into one

Simul ergo cum in unum congregemus – as we are gathered into one body
Ne nos mente dividamur, caveamus – beware, lest we be of divided mind

Exultemus – Rejoice

Cantantibus organis – instruments played
Dum aurora finem daret – while dawn was breaking into day

Fiat cor meum immaculatum – let my heart stay pure

Non confundar – not be confounded
Deus ibi est – God is there

Penance

Flotillas of birds skim the near distance, observing;
the shore being taken up by throngs of people
with buckets, bags and sticks.

I wonder, do they judge us?
Do they scorn or laugh or jeer?
They’d be within their rights.

Bottle tops, cigarette butts, candy wrappers;
Plastic straws, seven left shoes, a tarp;
Coffee lids, condoms, a mitt for catchers.

Packing peanuts, pills and partitions;
foam that will never break down into loam;
cosmetic jars, wine bottles, crushed can renditions.

We sweep and we swarm,
picking through weeds and thorn,
to get at an old tire, wheel rusted and worn.

The tide moves in, signaling our defeat,
as more bags and bottles drift, from farther out, in,
while all bag what was retrieved and retreat.

The birds take to the cleaner shore,
ready to bask and snooze in the sun;
we leave, wishing we could do more.

This is both a penance and a futility,
even done each day forever, of a utility
useless to blot the sin of our pollution.

Our penance is received, nevertheless;
one wonders if we can heal our world
by means of such feeble efforts;
napping birds make no answer, busy at rest.

© 2018 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen