I used to be a libertarian. Back in those days, defending stop and frisk would have been unconscionable to me. I would have railed against an authoritarian state flexing its muscle and treating honest people like second class citizens.
However, something life changing happened to me. While living in Las Vegas, the apartment building I lived in and all the apartment buildings on my street (they were owned by the same landlord) had become section eights. Government subsidized housing. I had grown up on the poor side of town as a child. I lived large portions of my teenage years in bug infested apartments and trailer parks. One of the reasons I joined the Army was to find a way out of that kind of existence. Nothing, however trained me for what was about to happen.
After the apts. became sections 8s , in moved the gang bangers (black, mexican, cuban). Hookers and crackheads flooded the street and alleyway. In what I would estimate as 26 hours, my neighborhood had turned into a small war zone where people were being killed and beaten.
I did not have a car at this time so I was forced to walk down the street to get to work. Everyday was a pushing match to get to the corner. Everyday, crackheads would beg, borrow and steal as the gang bangers would congregate on their respective corners harassing passers bye, especially women and children.
Eventually, the police made my street a priority and cop cars would drive down the street more often. This did not stop anything. The crime still kept going up. People were still being murdered. An elderly woman was robbed and shot to death as the grandson she was walking with was beaten into a coma. During the days that followed, the police had ratcheted up their patrols. This is the first time I would experience profiling.
Being one of the few white people who lived in this neighborhood I was often stopped on my way to work. I would have to start walking to work about half and hour earlier than I had been previously to make up for the time difference should I be stopped and frisked. As a police officer had advised me in a moment of candor, whenever the police saw a white person in my neighborhood, they assumed he was there to buy drugs or get a hooker.
Even though sometimes the police would be contemptuous and abusive as they were frisking me, other officers were far more professional. I hated every minute of it. I felt as if my privacy had been tossed away without as much as a second thought. Conversely, I thought of the good people on my block. The people who were now prisoners in their own home. The elderly, children and honest folks who now lived in a constant state of terror. Some of those people would later be killed.
It's funny how little meaning words have sometimes. "Being a prisoner in your own home" means far more than just being stuck in your home for fear of being murdered. It's a special kind of fear. A fear that at one time is humiliating, anger provoking and quiet. A quiet fear that eats away at you from the inside like a parasite.
So all these memories are why I am for stop and frisk. Not because I like it but because I can't think of anything else to do.
