When I saw a cluster of white police officers marching up to my neighbor’s house in military fatigues and helmets with large guns at the ready, my first instinct was to grab my camera and take a picture out the kitchen window. I started shooting video as they entered the house, ran around the back, and shepherded the small children who had been playing on the porch just a few minutes earlier out into the yard.
I soon stopped the recording. In many ways, nothing of note happened, other than someone later being taken away in handcuffs and charged with drug possession.
Yet the fact that my instinct was to record what I saw on camera stems almost entirely from an understanding of the problems built in to militarized and overzealous policing. It comes from the fact that we have recently seen example after example of white police officers failing to de-escalate encounters with black citizens, too often ending in the death of those citizens: Sandra Bland, Samuel DuBose, Freddie Gray,Eric Garner, and too many more.
I don’t want to mistrust the police. As a person who benefits from white privilege, I don’t have to. I was raised believing I could and should trust law enforcement. I don’t have to worry about being unfairly targeted while I’m driving or while I’m sitting in my living room. And yet because we have so many examples of blacks being mistreated, unfairly targeted, shot, harassed and otherwise abused by some in law enforcement, my instinct now is to protect my neighbor and turn on my camera.
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