My aunt had told me about this woman who wrote a lot of articles criticizing the community she lived in. She was an older woman, in her 60s, with a dog and a husband…and no children of any kind. She was a sweet woman if you met her, but when she saw issues in her community, she spoke to them and criticized leadership when they did nothing. Which made her very unwelcome.
Eventually this lead to someone reporting that her dog had bitten one of them…which was kind of hilarious…because her dog had no teeth due to a jaw infection, and hadn’t had teeth for at least 6 years prior to the date of the alleged incident. It ate only wet or liquid food to compensate for this. Also, the dog was with the owners when the alleged incident occurred…on a drive 2 hours away. Photographic evidence from friends social media accounts could prove it.
Ironically there was no police recording of the call made reporting the incident. Which definitely means someone called the cop’s private phone. However, a few days later the woman was put into a police car and interrogated about the incident on her own property and told she would have to go to court since a dog bite is considered a crime. She lawyered up, but not without putting her house on the market first.
After hearing this story I became afraid. Clearly messing with the police was always a hard bargain. I hadn’t had good experiences with cops in the past. Our community, when I was a teen, had some pretty bad cops who were known for terrible harassment, roughing up local teens even if they were good kids, and in some cases they started doing it to adults to the point our community started a website about how bad the cops were getting so they could swap stories and promote awareness.
When I contemplated the situation I found myself in, I became more anxious.
My situation is quite trivial to some. At least for now it is. A couple ladies I know and myself are trying to start a business downtown, and have been remodeling and painting the building for the past few weeks. It’s been a good time, until we go out to our cars…and I’ve received a parking ticket while my peers…who typically park right next to me…have not.
All my tickets claim that I have been parked for over the 2 hour parking limit. Which is true, and I’m more than happy to own up to it. I pay my tickets as I ought to, but what confounds me is that my peers, who have parked in the same 2 hour parking, have not received any tickets and in most cases have been parked there much longer than I have, and as I mentioned before, usually park right next to me.
I had contemplated putting in a complaint against the officer, because it has been the same officer issuing all my tickets. But, since hearing my aunt’s story about the woman in her community, I became slightly afraid. I know my tickets seem like such a small offense. I do have the right to file a complaint, especially since I know people who are also going over the time limit of parking who are not getting tickets. I’m feeling targeted. My cohorts feel I am as well. However, if I am already a target, how much worse will it get for myself and my peers if I make this choice?
The police have proven to escalate small offenses, if the videos swarming YouTube and social media lately have proven anything. The BLM Movement and the story my aunt told me along with my own experience have been enough proof to me that they can’t all be trusted. It doesn’t take much for a cop to antagonize a situation into a worse one, and while my situation is a bit different than that of an African American woman, I still fear.
I don’t fear for my life like African American’s do in this situation, which is totally my privilege showing, but I do fear for my finances, and I fear harassment. I’ve lived that before as a teen, and even now I often get mistaken as a teenager. What’s to say the cop won’t profile me as some stuck up “entitled” Millennial and keep throwing tickets at me? Or worse. What if they start following me? What if they start targeting me for false crimes? What if other cops start doing it too? I’m such a small woman and easily thrown into the back of a car….and I won’t even start with the percentage of sexual misconduct cases by police or former police officers (I have read too many articles and studies on it: https://www.bwjp.org/assets/documents/pdfs/webinars/dhhs-police-sexual-misconduct-a-national-scale-study.pdf ).
I hate feeling this anxiety, but if the cops I’ve dealt with in the past (though few) have shown me anything…it’s that they can’t be trusted to really help. Sometimes they are the criminal.
I’m just trying to open a business with some ladies to help build a better and stronger community. I just want to know where I can park when I’m working 8 or more hours a day and to have to pay a ‘daily fee’ of 20 bucks! I just want to know that I can trust my local police force to do the right thing. I want to know that I am not being targeted. I want to know that I am safe in my own community.
On top of all this? There is nowhere to go to get any kind of parking permit. All the private parking lots are for apartments or the larger businesses and they require you to live or work there in order to get a permit. So those of us who own smaller businesses either have to luck out and not get caught, or move our cars every two hours and hope to find another spot when we move. Which makes me feel even more helpless in my desire to be compliant.
I filed a complaint on Tuesday evening all the same. I had received yet another ticket and my peer was parked right next to me for at least 2 hours longer than I was, and didn’t receive a ticket. I was pissed. I filed the complaint against the officer online and I hope that gets the situation resolved. If it gets worse, my husband and I are switching cars. Which will suck because my SUV is the only vehicle we have large enough to relocate furniture to and from storage.
We will see what happens.