"The teenager who was arrested will now most likely have a contact card, a police record, and be well on his way to early criminalization that happens so disproportionately to African American youth in the Criminal Justice System. Can you imagine this scenario happening to a white teenager riding a bike on a sidewalk in Oak Park or Wilmette?"

I recently witnessed the arrest of a young black male by the Chicago Police Department for doing nothing more than sitting on a bike on the sidewalk. As a member of Northside Action for Justice’s CopWatch program, I have often seen and grown to expect such unwarranted arrests in our neighborhood of Uptown, but this incident struck me as particularly aggressive, uncalled for, and just plain stupid.

It was a Saturday morning and I was on my way to the Voices for Creative Non-Violence office over on Argyle. I decided to stop at a local store close to the intersection of Wilson and Broadway to pick up a pack of smokes. Upon exiting the store, I noticed there was a street stop in progress across the intersection by the Currency Exchange. I decided it was my civic duty to bear witness to the event.

I crossed Broadway and stood approximately 15 feet from the scene where a man was being detained by two CPD officers. He was placed up against a squad car as the officers wrote a contact card. This is a regular practice in Uptown, usually implemented through racial profiling, to gather information on “suspicious” persons and often gives officers an excuse to harass an individual in the future. Nonetheless, this was a routine stop and the man being detained was quietly complying with police orders.

The corner by the Currency Exchange is a busy spot, and several other people were watching the event as they waited to cross the street. Everyone seemed to be looking at each other with a feeling of frustration, wondering why the man was being detained, but no one really said anything. I proceeded to pass out a few CopWatch fliers and several people thanked me for the work we were doing in the neighborhood.

Just as the cops appeared to be finishing up with the contact card on the detainee, two undercover “tac” cars, sometimes know as “attack” cars, arrived hurriedly on to the scene. Four officers jumped out of their cars and immediately approached two black teenagers who were sitting on their bikes, approximately a foot from the street, waiting on the light to cross the intersection. I had been so focused on the street stop that I had not even really noticed the two youths or their mother who was standing directly behind them.

The officer who was taking the lead yelled at the youth in a commanding voice: “Get off the bikes. Get OFF the bikes!” Both of the teenagers moved to calmly get off of their deadly, two-wheeled carriages of crime, but one committed the unforgiveable sin of smacking his lips as he did so. He did not say a word; he merely expressed the frustration that any human feels when being verbally assaulted by another. The officer took that as an insult, placed the young men up against the car, and began searching them with no probable cause.

At this point the unnoticed mother decided to assert her presence. She said; “Hey these are my sons! Why are you searching them?” The cops ignored her, so she leaned over and repeated the question. This was too much communication for one of the tactical officers, so he proceeded to forcefully shove the mother away from the scene and her son. “You know not to interfere with a police investigation,” he shouted as he disregarded her concerns.

Approximately 15 people were watching now, and the small crowd echoed the indignation of the mother. The police looked a bit uneasy and quickly decided to place the teenager who had smacked his lips in the back of the car. The frustrated young man said little to nothing during the whole encounter, even as his mother was shoved by the police. Now, he was being rewarded for his good manners by being arrested and taken away to the infamous Area 3 police headquarters at Belmont and Western, a known site of police torture during the Burge years.

As this whole debacle went down, I was documenting the license plate numbers of the undercover cars and as many details about the officers as I could gather. I handed the information to the mother with a CopWatch flier and let her know that we could help her file a complaint. The cops saw our interaction, and one officer barked at the mother; “You can get all the correct information, even spelled correctly, at Belmont and Western when you come to look for your son.” The cops sped away and left the mom and her more fortunate son to figure out some way to get over to Area 3. Never mind what they had been doing before their unlucky encounter; never mind their plans for the rest of the day. Now, bus fare, a whole day, and likely the evening would be spent trying to sort this mess out.

This arrest, a ticketable offense at best, is indicative of the usual and everyday harassment that many citizens of color face by the Chicago Police Department. What’s more, the teenager who was arrested will now most likely have a contact card, a police record, and be well on his way to early criminalization that happens so disproportionately to African American youth in the Criminal Justice System. Can you imagine this scenario happening to a white teenager riding a bike on a sidewalk in Oak Park or Wilmette?

Consider these findings from a recent report titled Critical Condition: African American Youth in the Justice System from the D.C.-based Campaign for Youth Justice:

White youth are significantly more likely than African American youth to use drugs and 30 percent more likely to sell drugs, but African American youth are twice as likely to be arrested and detained for drug offenses.

Drug cases were filed against African American youth in adult courts at nearly five times the rate of white youth, and African American youth accounted for 87 percent of those charged with drug offenses.

In Cook County, black youth currently make up 84.2 per cent of the population at the county’s only juvenile center, while Hispanics make up 13.9 per cent, whites 1.4 per cent and 4 per cent other nationalities. Males, he said, make up 92.2 per cent and females 7.8 per cent. [1]

I can personally testify to implications of these statistics having grown up in Tennessee as a middle class white kid who got high and occasionally sold marijuana to friends. I never saw even so much as a fine and many of my friends escaped jail time all together after having been caught numerous times with sellable amounts of narcotics. And let‘s have no illusions, I am sure there are many upper class white condo owners right here in Uptown that use illegal drugs and do not have to worry about being shaken down by the police on the corner. It is obvious that our justice system discriminates in implementing the “war on drugs.”

At Northside Action for Justice (NSAJ), we are striving to build a society where it is easier for people to live full lives. I think one of the key elements in that struggle is to reduce state and institutional violence along with addressing street violence. Most of the people that fill our prisons are doing time for non-violent drug offences. If incarceration has proven to produce more of the same and higher recidivism rates, why would we pursue these failed policies so blindly?

The officers at local CAPS meetings and the pro-gentrification class in Uptown would have you believe that picking up the phone and calling 911 is the most effective, even righteous, thing to do when you see two or more young black males on a sidewalk in the neighborhood. It takes more courage and character to stop and say hello than it does to make such a fearful call that might lead to who knows what for the youth.

I have often heard it said over at Voices for Creative Non-Violence; “if you want peace, then build justice.” That is what Voices is working towards in Iraq and the Middle East, and that is what CopWatch aims to do here in Uptown.

NSAJ is advocating for affordable housing and jobs that pay a living wage so that Uptown can maintain its diversity and people of all colors and economic backgrounds can live a life of dignity in this community. If we come together and support these low-income and minority groups that have historically been chased off by the police and the gentrification class, this community will be an eclectic and vibrant place where our youth can flourish and explore their potential.

Joshua Brollier is a member of the Francis of Assisi Catholic Worker Community, an activist with Northside Action for Justice, and a co-coordinator with Voices for Creative Non-Violence.

Endnotes

1. http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=
5ea659e8f4c6a52d0063d8cb61a2736emerous