I work at night in Baltimore County. For the last two months I have not spent an evening on the bus or on foot in Eastern Baltimore County without seeing a police officer questioning someone, either a pedestrian or motorist. The person being detained and questioned is rarely young, and never black. This runs to 16 episodes I have ticked off on my Everfresh pineapple juice receipt over the past 24 trips to work taken in that 60 day period.

The chopper is always in the sky.

Cops are always visible, never absent from my sight for more than 10 minutes as I walk.

Although I have walked this route for four years now, the cops still slow down and shadow me as I haul my old ass to work. I guess this is something like those hicks in Pennsylvania harassing that groundhog every February.

The store I work at is open 24 hours, so I see these cops come in to purchase their lunch. One of them says hello, the other five all glare at me, stand taller, and walk slower, in my presence. I guess that means I have 4 out of 5 readers out of that shift.

The past four nights I have worked I have noticed that at least one customer is pulled over and questioned on the parking lot.

One of the ladies I train lives in this same jurisdiction. She is very attractive and drives a nice car. She has told me that she is being pulled over by cops twice a week. When she asks ‘why’ they say it is because there have been getting complaints about her car driving through the neighborhood. She responds, “But I live here, how can I not drive through the neighborhood?”

These might just amount to typical cop dating attempts, taking into account her good looks.

I, personally, am glad that more motorists are being randomly targeted by police than pedestrians. I have a sense that these cops practiced on the likes of me so that they could harass the likes of you more efficiently.

Enjoy.

Now, I have long known that city cops pull over any lone young man who is not dressed like a hipster or yuppie, just on reflex. All of my black fighters and employees were routinely harassed by cops. At one point I had to schedule an extra man on my ghetto night crew to make up for the one who never made it to work because he got locked up for questioning the cops as to why he was being detained on his way to work. It must be tough being raised by women and thus being taught to backtalk on reflex.

There is a crime-fighting logic to this, because if you pull over five random young black guys you will bag someone with an outstanding warrant or who is in possession of something illegal, if just a joint or an open container. This insures corrections facilities will hit their occupancy targets, and also insures that every day guys will get the hardcore criminal abuse and training they need to come back out on the street as an effective criminal, necessitating more police overtime. Like I said, this makes sense on many levels.

Last night at work a customer, Nigel, a tall dignified looking white man of 55 years, walked into my section and began to speak to me. Something was bothering him. This is what he said.

“I’m stopping by after work out there to grab my groceries. I have no record. I have never done drugs. I only drink at home. I had it five under the limit. I have a new vehicle with no violations and my tags are recent. A young cop pulls me over, questions me, runs my I.D.

“I ask him what is wrong and he says that caravans are being stolen so they are pulling every caravan over. I say, ‘If I was going to steal this thing I would not drive on the primary road where you are. If I was going to steal this thing I would be a young guy, not an old man on his way home from work.’

“He starts to get shitty and I tell him who my cousin is. He knows my cousin. He’s a cop, in the same precinct. The kid then just salutes and says, ‘have a good day sir’. I got the impression that even if I was stealing my own car, even if I was a young criminal, I could have just dropped my cop relative’s name and I would have been passed through. Its feeling like we’re behind enemy lines, like this is occupied territory.

“I know it’s wrong to call a cop a pig, that it must hurt their feelings. I never thought I would get to this point, especially at my age. But fuck them, fuck them all! They are pigs. This is supposed to be a free country not a police state."

I don’t understand what is behind this policing trend, or really even what it signifies. This conversation brought to mind the time I had lunch with a friend who had come down from New York. When he was going through his wallet he had a stack of dark cards. I asked him what they were and he explained [I forget the term] that they were a type of fraternal police card. If you have a friend in New York who is on the police force and belongs to a certain fraternal order, he can issue you a card dated for that year. He told me it was important to keep your issued cards together, so that you can prove to the cop who randomly pulls you over that you have maintained a lasting friendship with another police officer for the number of years indicated by your cards. Although it initially struck me as creepy and corrupt, upon reflection this sounds to me like a possible police union initiative to offer some comfort to people in a heavily policed city in which the chief executive demands stop and frisk tactics.

In the defense of the police, they are hired and trained to intimidate and suppress, not protect and serve. They are doing their job as dictated by the politicians you support. As a social trend marker I think there is something significant about the random stopping of apparently law-abiding middle-aged white men and women coming and going to work and to the supermarket, in an area where virtually all crime is committed by 15-25 year old unemployed black males. One might suspect that this has more to do with developing a cadre of police who will be able to implement an effective curfew system in the not too distant dystopia. It might just be related to the recent purchase of 200 infantry fighting vehicles by the Department of Homeland Security.

Over and out from the Peoples Republic of Maryland.