[From a May conversation with a drunk middle aged couple in a Newark New Jersey bar]
My nephew is mentally challenged, a special ed. Student who graduated from high school. He has a driver’s license and was so happy to be able to travel to Virginia to meet his friends before they went off to college. I was worried about him, but my husband said, “He’ll be driving I-95 all the way up. He’ll be fine.”
Then we don’t hear from him all day!
This is what happened, unbeknownst to us.
He has a flat tire right at the exit to the baseball and football stadium down there in Baltimore.
A police officer pulls over to help him.
I don’t know—he didn’t know what kind of police.
[Transit police are likely.]
Well, the officer asks him if it’s okay to look in his car before they change the flat and he says, “Yes,” and they find a reefer joint that he was bringing home from the get together. We didn’t know he got high, but, it was just a joint, right?
Well, they take his car and impound it into evidence and he gets released without even a court date—he didn’t have any papers. He’s slow and he didn’t tell it too thorough. What was clear was that the only thing they left him with was is phone and his wallet and he had no charger, which was plugged into his car—which is gone—and he’s wandering around downtown Baltimore.
He went to a doughnut shop for help and they told him to leave.
But then, this black man on the bus stop talked to him and told him he couldn’t stay out all night or he wouldn’t make it and to come with him.
So this man…
[Wipes tear emerging from eye and sniffles and takes another drink of wine]
…This man takes him to a 7-11 and keeps him inside there until they can find someone—a customer—with a phone charger, so that he could call us. And he did call us and the man that owned the 7-11 let him stay in there with the black man as his protector most of the night until we could get to him. God bless that man. That city is so frightening. When we drove in to pick him up at about three in the morning it was like a zombie movie…no police, just dark shadows of people lurking against the buildings…
From our further discussion, I determined that this Good Samaritan scene took place on Howard Street just before midnight, no place for an out-of-town paleface to be on foot.
Welcome to Harm City, White-Boy
Dawn in Dindustan
Conducting the Moral Autopsy 0f a Nation
He was lucky. I frequently have nothing good to say about Blacks but I have always said that there are a few good ones. Thank goodness he met one of them. I think a lot of older Black Men are much more decent than when they are younger. When younger they terrorize everyone around them but when they get older they realize the vulnerability of all humans and finally realize they are vulnerable too. Many times they have to spend many years in jail to think clearly enough about this.
It would nice if this could be learned earlier as then we could get along but I see no way whatsoever of imparting this except the hard way.
This "father" should be taken out back and horsewhipped for stupidity and child abuse, if he's still responsible for this boy.
“He’ll be driving I-95 all the way up. He’ll be fine.”
What kind of mindless assholery is this? That's one of the most dangerous stretches of road in the United States of America. Any cop will tell you that if you could look inside half the cars on that road and see who was in them and what they were doing, you'd never get back on it with the same attitude.
The kid needs help and looking after. It's like sending a 7-year-old boy up that road and into that jungle. Sounds like "dad" just wanted to get rid of him, and it didn't work.
MS-13 has been leavening bodies on the side of I-95 for almost ten years.
I got the impression that this young man had been raised by his aunt and uncle.
I just finished Arrest Proof Yourself by Dale Carson, Wes Denham. Carson is ex Florida cop, ex FBI. You'd think it would ra-ra cops, but Carson is now a defense attorney and he's seen criminal justice from both ends, and it isn't pretty. More like saying how the system works, than condoning it, which he doesn't.
Interesting on the psychology of cops, how they live to make busts—they're driven to it psychologically, by being the type that becomes cops, and professionally because the big bust is how they get promotion.
Re: finding the joint, it's "funny" but a lot of suburban soccer moms are running the same risk. Their kid drops a Ritalin in the car, over time the controlled-substance builds up, they get pulled over, car is searched—a felony having it inside your car without a prescription on hand to show the cop.
Kind of makes me paranoid actually, now, after reading it. You can be arrested because someone stole your identity, started kiting checks and left a ton of bank fraud in your name, just waiting for the trip wire of you getting pulled over in a traffic stop and find you have an outstanding warrant, then have the whole lot cave in on your head.
If there is a silver lining—it seems the nephew didn't get arrested. One of the injustices of the system as Carson points out is that a mere arrest gets you put on the nationwide arrest database—really affecting your chances to get a job etc even if no charges are pressed. What he calls the electronic plantation.
I'm probably one of the lowest arrest risks in the country. White, conventional looking, polite, no arrest record, not even a traffic citation, not giving off a vibe of "off the pigs"; our local sheriff and I are good friends - I sometimes keep his hunting dogs for him.
With that picture in mind, twice in my life I've been stopped and literally screamed at by police, both times in small Georgia towns, where I'm perfectly at home and understand the culture. Both times, they were overweight, young, white caricatures of local county cops, as if Gailerd Sartain were playing them in a movie. Both times, I was doing nothing wrong or actionable. I can just imagine how it would be for someone with a different "presentation".
The first one vented his frustrations at me (possibly not getting enough at home, or she was getting more than he was, which comes to the same thing) and then let me go. The other one (Clarksville, GA), who was at spit-flying-out-of-his-mouth level, took me to the courthouse, where a magistrate took me to another room, apologized profusely to me, and sent me on my way.
It only takes a few sick people to sully the whole profession ... there ARE some good ones out there, and unless we personally hire mercenary protectors, I don't know how else we do it ...
Thanks for the tip about UNZ.
I just don't submit work to anyone other than Lynn at this point. It helps the writing flow better not havening to target an audience. That's said, if she asks me to write for UNZ and made the connect I would. I just don't spend writing energy attempting to sell my writing. It's purely a creative thing.
I will address the Hoffman point in an article.
Thank you for that too, PR.