Trespassing with a salad

Militarized law enforcement threatens our citizens and community

Some Tulsans think the recent tumult between cops and black males—in Ferguson, New York City, Baltimore, South Carolina and now here—is hyperbolic and unrepresentative. As skewed treatment and excessive force by police come into focus nationally, we must also grasp how these absurd and often life-shattering run-ins corrode our communities and flout reconciliation and justice. 

Mountains of statistical evidence¹ align with my personal reality as a black male and alert observer in Tulsa. I’ve had more than a dozen disturbing encounters with law enforcement over my decades here. Before we go big-picture, I’ll share a very recent experience—a traumatic one that’s bugged me for days now.

On April 17, I was crossing a concrete path in downtown Tulsa. The walkway runs from Elgin to Greenwood beside the new GreenArch apartments that front Archer. Drillers fans will know the spot; many regularly traverse it in the hundreds en route to the stadium. I was carrying a fabulous Mexican veggie medley from my friend Vincent Gonzales, a food trucky who operates in the area. It was about 11:30 on a Friday morning.

As I exited the path, a white SUV pulled up alongside Greenwood. Two men popped out of the vehicle wearing “commando light” style outfits. Apparently sporting bulletproof vests under their shirts, both were heavily armed with guns, Tasers, mace canisters, extra bullets, handcuffs and a passel of communications gear.

The men were Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) rail cops. They walked briskly toward me as the lead officer loudly asked if I knew was trespassing on rail property. I apologized; I was only vaguely aware of this, as the path wasn’t roped off. In a cynical tone, he asked why I had ignored the BNSF signs and pointed toward one of two concrete pylons on either side of the walkway. These “signs,” like the two at the Elgin entrance to the path, were a little over 2 feet high and not terribly salient. I told the officer that it would help if the signs were higher and more prominently lettered. Clearly irritated, he asked if maybe the signs should be neon. I replied that same would be over the top, but that I had worked in planning at City Hall, and if you want people to comply with your wishes it’s best to have effective signage.

He then began to lecture me. Tiring of the exchange and wondering how it would end, I must have shifted my stance slightly. Wildly, my interrogator became loud and animated.

“What are you doing!?” he exclaimed. “Are you trying to get to my back?”

As evenly as I could manage, I told him I was doing no such thing and that he was being paranoid. He angrily said he would now photograph me for the BNSF database and demanded my name, age and address. I told him I didn’t like responding to arbitrary demands but that I’d honor his request with deep reluctance and revisit it later.

Deciding to end the encounter, I stepped off into Greenwood Avenue proper—presumably beyond BNSF’s jurisdiction—and commenced a 150-foot march across Greenwood and a parking lot to my office at the Oklahoma Eagle Publishing Company.

The face-off was humiliating and rife with the potential of being shot in the ass for doing exactly nothing. Why couldn’t the officers have simply told me I was trespassing and asked me to stay away? What’s next? One day, while I’m flying out of London or Phoenix or OKC, will an airline or TSA operative ask if I’m a railroad “disruptor”—a suspect person? You don’t have to be paranoid to wonder how BNSF and their myriad IT/security contractors exchange info with other private entities and government agencies.

Another unforgettable event took place about 18 months ago. After I was hit by a small truck while walking downtown, a Tulsa police officer asked me if I’d just been drinking at a nearby bar (I hadn’t and would rather eat a frozen dog than drink in the morning). Decades ago, I was visiting a terminally ill friend at Saint Francis when a nurse asked if I was carrying a gun (it was a cell phone). Shortly after I’d entered my friend’s room in the oncology ward, hospital cops and police officers had surrounded the nurse’s station. They backed down only after the nurse intervened.

My experiences in Tulsa and the police overreach coming to light nationally might not all point to the exact same phenomena. But they share a racially tinged, arbitrary and monstrous disproportionality. In Tulsa, Eric Harris’ death bears an uncanny resemblance to the 2009 killing of Oscar Grant—a 22-year-old black cook—by BART transit cop Johannes Mehserle at the Fruitvale BART Station near San Francisco. As in Hains’ killing, Mehserle claimed to have visualized grabbing his Taser but instead fired his gun. The outrage was powerfully dramatized² in the 2013 film “Fruitvale Station,” and Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Both the Harris³ and Grant⁴ shootings have been attributed to “slip and capture”—but some experts say that blaming the error on a syndrome is junk science⁵.

Federally collected data⁶ show that, compared with white males and females and black women in often-identical police encounters, black males are at far greater risk of being injured or killed by police. In addition to increasing police militarization⁷ and digital audits of police work, many experts single out our reckless war on drugs as fueling the rash of recent police brutality. In our modest-income communities—and most heavily in our neighborhoods of color—the drug war has normalized a dysfunctional web of tactical operations, sting and informant practices, entrapment troupes and improvisational drug raids. These ops would be unthinkable in whiter, wealthier parts of our cities.

In addition to an overhaul of the war on drugs, the heightened use of force in policing highlights a dire need for greater transparency. Bates wore a body camera when he shot Harris, and another officer in the sting was outfitted with video-augmented glasses that Bates had donated. In several cities⁸, preliminary findings about body borne video suggest it can dramatically reduce citizen complaints as well as the number of irregular/brutal encounters between citizens and officers.

Before Tulsa voters rubber-stamp another $15-$30 million annually for policing with the Vision 2025 renewal vote (probably in November), let’s consider ways to make Tulsa policing a more community-oriented, responsive service. Funding body borne video⁹ to record every police encounter is a critical first step. We must also improve police engagement skills, implement structured citizen oversight and diversify recruitment.

It took me days to fully recover from the micro-aggression I experienced with the rail cops. But our challenge is much greater than these individual run-ins happening daily across the U.S. We know that rogue policing and racial inequality affect child development¹⁰ and the mental health of young black and Hispanic people¹¹. A dysfunctional police force erodes our social fabric and stifles our collective creativity. We won’t realize our immense potential as a city without ensuring that our law enforcement protects and serves all Tulsans. 

For more on the state of law enforcement from Ray Pearcey, check out "Policing the police" from September 2014.