The Safety Dance

I need to apologize. If you were one of the cars stranded under water for a half-hour in the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel wishing you could ring the neck of whomever was responsible for closing it down...

...well, that'd be me.

But it wasn't my fault. I swear. I'm a pedestrian usually. The BQE has always and will always confuse me with it's whole 'east-west' nonsense when any reasonable person knows it runs all four points, I simply paused (PAUSED MIND YOU) at the booth to ask the kind Toll Person which direction I should head to get to my destination.

She said, "To get there you head west". I thanked her, we said 'have a nice day', and I pulled away. Suddenly she screamed "STOP! WAIT! STOP! STOP!" I looked in the rear-view and found her frantically waving her arms and pointing at my van, I hit the brakes. Before I could put the van in reverse, or even roll down the window to see what the trouble was (had I forgotten to get my change? is my muffler falling off?) I was interrupted by the appearance of a military rifle on the other side of the driver's side window; pointed prejudiciously between my eyes.

Yellow alert my ass.

My reality shifted dramatically, the slow-motion panic you experience at the onset of a catastrophe set in, time ceased to flow in a liner fashion. A second cop appeared on the driver's side, demanding that I "GET OUT OF THE CAR, NOW!" while motioning a third around the to the passenger side door. I was paralyzed, all the noise of the highway disappeared, 'click!' as if a master mute button had been pressed somewhere. I began to suffocate inside the gelatinous substance that had replaced the air.

"I said, GET OUT OF THE CAR!" the thing behind the black barrel screamed.

Amadou Diallo, the first thought that sprang to mind, my only thought, was of Amadou Diallo. "This is how you get shot" I told myself, "This is how it happens, I'm going to reach for the door handle and they're going to shoot me forty some-odd times... they're going to tell the press that I blew through a toll booth in a nondescript van with Jersey plates and then refused to get out of the car, how I suddenly reached for (a gun, a detonator, the pin on the grenade taped to my chest...) FORCING THEM to shoot me, that they were only PROTECTING OUR BORDERS, how I was DANGEROUS and BREAKING THE LAW or, at the very least, SUSPICIOUS...and in these times of terror and war, SUSPICIOUS PEOPLE are all potential TERRORISTS who warrant a IMMEDIATE JUSTICE.

The toll girl, having left her booth, approached the van from behind, strangely unfazed by the sight of a citizen's vehicle being commandeered by an armed mob of police, or even worried about the possible brutal murder of the driver..."Get back to your POST!" the thing behind the black barrel barked at her as she neared.

"Just tell her I was wrong... it's EAST," she yelled through cupped hands held to her mouth, "TELL HER TO HEAD EAST!"

"What?" Cop two said.

"I told her to take the BQE WEST, I was wrong, IT'S EAST!" With this she turned on her heel and stepped back in her booth.

Now you'd think the whole event would be over at this point, right? It was all a big mistake, they would apologize for scaring two years off my life and say something about how you can 'never be too careful these days' and send me on my way; perhaps with a little gift, a 'sorry we pointed a gun at you - here's a coupon for complementary Freedom Fries' for instance. Not so. The Bridge and Tunnel Police (Homeland Security division) don't spring out of action as easily as they spring into it. Guns had been drawn, testosterone levels raised, as well as rancor, adrenaline, and purpose.

Cop One made the universal 'roll down your window' motion with his hand. I did; his expression remained unchanged from the 'don't give me an excuse to kill you' face he'd worn throughout --even though it had become clear the whole event was born out of A MISUNDERSTANDING ABOUT DIRECTIONS-- so I returned my hands to the wheel where they would be in full view.*

"Where are you headed?" he said.
"Home...I mean Williamsburg."
"And where are you coming from?" His eyes bore a hole in my left temple.
"I'm coming from..." I took a peek into the rear view...hundreds and hundreds of cars sat motionless behind me, I realized they had not only shut down my toll lane, but the whole plaza. "...shouldn't I pull over or something?"
"I asked you a question, where are you coming from?"
"...I'm blocking traffic, shouldn't we continue this off to the side?" I grabbed the gear shift momentarily which made the black barrel reappear in the window, confirming my suspicion that this episode was far from over --it had simply transformed into a quest for justification. I took one last peek in the rear-view, saw the faces of the curious, disgruntled masses, and understood a new objective had emerged: showing my fellow stranded Americans that Homeland Security is in Full Effect.

And boy is it ever, in all of its ill-conceived glory. What an utter waste of my, and everyone else's time. The decent on my truck wasn't the waste of time -- On first inspection I was, after all, driving a rented, unmarked, out of state van, was confused about the lay of the land and driving erratically, and had a state employee scream for me to STOP like I had just thrown a Molotov cocktail down her blouse -- I would say those things add up to an understandable reason to check me out...initially -- the following 'investigation' was the ludicrous part; pointless in fact.

Remember it had been made clear that the Toll Girl was just being POLITE and didn't want me to go in the wrong direction...Yet two cops peered into the van (with flashlights, in broad daylight) while the third asked me everything from my country of origin and place of birth, up to a minute-by-minute account of my day before arriving at his post, all at gunpoint. What they DIDN'T ask me were the most simple, pertinent questions, such as my name...they never even asked to see my license or registration. It was demanded, but I was never made to step out of the truck. None of them ever actually entered the van or checked its contents. To the point, if I DID have a bomb or was en route to (or fleeing from) a diabolical deed, I would have gotten away. Essentially all they accomplished was scaring the shit out of me and shutting down lower Manhattan... Oh, and stranding a few hundred people in the tunnel.

I know everyone who travels has had, or has heard tell of similar experiences, so I'll dispense with the usual platitudes. I'm just saying that I, and anyone who was witness to the shouts of STOP and my ensuing detainment didn't drive away thinking "well, it's nice to see they are doing such a good job...I feel so SAFE now..."; we all drove away going "Fucking morons. You stupid fucking morons."

*keeping your hands in full view is a habit I picked up after family friend (and NYS Police officer) Adam and I were pulled over for speeding. As our car and the cruiser rolled to a stop, Adam exhaled "Oh shit... my gun is in the glove compartment". Before I could react, he told me to roll down my window and place my hands on the roof of the car. As the cop approached our car, Adam, who had also extended his hands out his window, yelled, "Officer...I have a registered hand gun in the glove compartment." The cop drew his weapon, instructed us to keep our hands on the roof, which we did, crossed over to the passenger's side, opened the glove compartment, and removed the gun. The cop asked "Do you have any other weapons?" to which Adam replied "No, I don't. Only my service revolver." Proper I.D.'s were displayed, they exchanged pleasantries and we pulled away without incident, ticket-free of course (even though Adam was only a cadet at the time).

The whole thing made no sense to me. "So you TELL him we have a gun in the car, put your hands on the roof, which, c'mon, looks like you're up to something, freak him out, force him to draw his weapon, and this is a good thing?...we could have been shot!"

Adam explained, "No, that was to make sure we DIDN'T get shot. Imagine if I leaned over to get my registration out of the glove compartment and a gun popped out...he would have thought I was reaching for it. He could have shot us both. Legally. Self defense."

Adam said the majority of cop-on-innocent shootings are usually the fault of jerky movements and misinformation. He said (according to his experience) one should always assume the cop is green and trigger-happy, so you should stay as still as possible and keep your hands where they can see them. As a matter of fact don't move at all until they've reached you or your vehicle and you are instructed to do so; no matter what the situation. He added, laughing, that "You can't sue them for police misconduct if you're dead." Our friend, the cop-hating cop.

I've always remembered that when dealing with the police. Amadou Diallo was shot 41 times for reaching for his wallet in the dark.

Posted by Antigeist at May 7, 2003 08:53 AM