Beyond Ferguson

It was predictable when the governor of the state declared a state of emergency when, in fact, there was utterly no emergency. What was there? The pending certainty that once again, the cops would get away with murder.

Let’s play fair: every time a cop intervenes in a situation, there is a risk of injury or death. Decisions are made in split seconds that have lifelong consequences. What am I saying? Maybe Darren Wilson had a reasonable belief that Michael Brown was armed and dangerous. Maybe he acted correctly.

(Do I really think so? Of course not. I’m also in a café, not a cop car. I’m reading things, not having them happen around me, as I’m supposed to take charge of a situation without having all the facts.)

So give Wilson a break. But there’s a problem: what do we do with the statistics like these?

Anyone looking at this chart would come to only one conclusion: the police in the United States of America are waging a war on black people. Oh, and by the way, what does our prison rate look like over time? Have a peek:

In short, around 1980 we went nuts and decided to impose draconian sentences on everything, even offenses that were nonviolent. So now, we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world at 743 persons per 100,000. Compare that to Norway, with 71 inmates per 100,000. Can anyone really believe that the United States is ten times more criminal than Norway?

“Those white motherfuckahs will never catch this Niggah; not up here in these hills,” said Montalvo, as he drove about 60 degrees up a hill in the mountains, two weeks ago. “They’d never get a police car up here…”

He had taken us to the river, since I was stressed out and needing a break. So Montalvo? Well, he promised that standing under a waterfall was God’s way of “bitch-slapping the sins out of me.” And who could resist that?

Along the way, he was smoking something hand-rolled, and do I have to tell you? Of course I assumed it was dope, though he told me later that it was passion fruit seeds, instead. Was it? Whatever it was, it didn’t affect his driving down some of the steepest, curviest roads on the island.

But if he tests positive? Well, it will then be 744 not 743 inmates per 100,000 people. And how much will we all pay to incarcerate a black kid who formed a mystical union with a blue macaw?

I could do the numbers, which would probably indicate that we could provide Montalvo with an aviary full of blue macaws, save money, and not jeopardize in the least public safety. But those aren’t the real numbers: what would it do to Montalvo, what sort of man would come out of seven years in prison? Would there be a poet left there?

And what would it do to me?

“Man, I can see it all over your face,” he told me.

“What you’re not hearing is me talking to my father,” I told him.

Because Montalvo had climbed two or three up a rock face in the river, and I was seriously wondering if he would jump down, and what I’d do about that, since I knew perfectly well that there were large rocks six inches below the surface so of course Montalvo was going to sever his spinal column and spend the rest of his days in “I Love You Lord Home Center” Yes, click on the link: it really exists.

Well, I had been arguing with my father, who was telling me from very-much-above (I sure hope) “tell that crazy kid not to jump!” After all, the only reason I have my feet is because every single last time I mowed the lawn, my father had insisted that I wear leather shoes, and had told me never to pull the mower towards me, but rather push the mower away from me. See? That’s why I’m not hopping around on stumps right now.

And it would have been a shame to lose Montalvo to a spinal column injury, since he had very patiently taken Raf by the hand and shoulder, to guide over the rocky river bed. It was touching: a younger man helping his father, unprompted and spontaneously.

It would also be a shame to lose Montalvo to the criminal justice system, since my scotch is OK but his dope is not. I wanted to tell him, my son who had taken his other father by the hand and shepherded him up the river, that the cops could be trusted, that he didn’t need to head for the hills and hope that they wouldn’t send the helicopters instead. I wanted to tell that but…

…I couldn’t.