I haven’t had many encounters with the police over the years. Most of those encounters involve getting fined for petty driving violations. This probably lines up with the experience of most readers.
But my most recent encounter – from a year or two ago – highlights a few things for me. It shows, I think, the dangers inherent in any contact with police officers on duty. Even when nothing outrageously bad results from it.
Knock, Knock
This all happened at around 9:30pm on a summer evening, just past dark and at the end of the day. Andrea and I were sitting on the couch in the living room. Probably reading or using Facebook.
We heard a loud knock at the door. We hadn’t heard anyone approaching. And the view from our living room doesn’t allow us to see who’s outside.
Before anyone asks, we’re nowhere near paranoid enough to even consider investing in a camera at the front of our house. I mean, come on. We live in one of the safest parts of a low-crime city. Who needs a camera?
We looked at each other, thinking the same thing. It was a loud, aggressive sounding knock. And there’s no reason for a person to be at our front door at this time of day. No one called us, so it’s probably not someone we know. We silently decided to stay where we are, seeing whether the person would knock again or go away.
I mean, maybe it was just a drunk student from the neighborhood who’s at the wrong house. That had happened to us before.
Iowa City Police
The mystery person pounds at the door again. “Iowa City Police!” And this time, he shined a flashlight into our house.
Andrea and I look at each other again. I mean, he said he was a police officer. Maybe that makes some readers feel safer. Maybe it doesn’t. But my point is that anyone can knock at a door in the dark and shout “police!”
That doesn’t mean they’re police.
But Andrea and I both got up this time. It sounded like the person wasn’t going to just leave. So I guess we’d have to go answer the door.
I walked up to the door and opened it. On the other side stood…an Iowa City police officer. He was a young black man, perhaps an inch or two shorter than me. He was holding a flashlight.
As I said, this happened a year or two ago. I can’t recall all the details of the conversation, but I’ll do the best I can.
What I remember is that he told us that he was looking for someone wanted on criminal charges of some kind or another. He claimed Andrea’s car was somehow linked to the person he was trying to find, and he shared a photo of the person in question.
I said, truthfully, that I had no idea who the person was. And that the person certainly wasn’t in our house. That was the basic substance of the conversation.
As with most experiences I’ve had with police, the officer played up his authority and made the entire situation more tense and hostile than needed. But he didn’t escalate beyond this point. The officer didn’t ask permission to enter our house. Nor would we have given permission if asked.
Results?
After another awkward minute or two, the officer left. Presumably he figured out he had the wrong house and wrong car. Whoever or whatever it was he was looking for, he clearly didn’t find it at our house.
At this point, it’s a good idea to take stock. The officer showed us a picture of an older black man who looked like he was going through rough times – perhaps poverty, mental illness, or homelessness. Possibly all three of those things. We live in a predominantly white and upper middle class neighborhood. The officer, I suspect, backed off once he noticed that disconnect. He surely noted the sheer unlikelihood that the person in his photo was hiding in a house in our neighborhood.
Furthermore, I’ll note for readers that I’m not making any specific accusation against the officer. Nothing about this case screams ‘police misconduct.’ I don’t have a police manual handy, but I suspect the officer played it ‘by the book.’ As far as the book goes.
And, really, that’s the point. I found his manner unnecessarily, and even inappropriately, aggressive. In particular, the pounding on the door after dark and the shining of a flashlight into our house from outside. But I wouldn’t be surprised if police procedure calls for some or all of these things.
What if we’re not going to be able to ‘procedure’ our way out of problems?
Scenarios and Lessons
All this leaves me to wonder a few things. Let’s say we start changing some details of this case. What happens then? Suppose I were black and the officer were white. Suppose I lived in a more working class and/or non-white neighborhood. A neighborhood where the officer might have expected someone like his suspect to be hiding.
What if I answered the door with a gun in hand? After all, it’s my legal right to do so.
And what if the suspect had been hiding in my house?
This case get a lot uglier when working through these scenarios. Would the officer have shot me? Or shot both Andrea and I?
I don’t know. I don’t think any readers know either. And the details of this case – along with what the case could have been – should give readers pause about how they think about policing.
Why? Because that’s how police contact works. It’s how disproportionate police contact with certain groups works.
Most interactions with police play out more like the one I had, the one where no one gets shot. But even these cases come with serious dangers. When you string together enough cases like this, you find one where an officer shoots a person. And when you start thinking about police contact with members of any so-called ‘underclass‘, that case where an officer shoots a person happens sooner.
The issue here is policing in general, not ‘police misconduct’ or ‘bad apples’. It happens even when the officer does things by the book. It’s what happens during everyday, ordinary policing.
And that’s one reason why as a city or as a society, we should reduce police contact with people.
