You Tell Me...

Yesterday morning (Saturday) "Uncly" was driving around Harlem. He has a silver sedan, pretty ordinary, smallish. Nothing too flashy. He's gotten pulled over and ticketed on occasion because his window tint was too dark--he fixed that--or because he's got these little lights on the hood he shouldn't have. No sure what he got pulled over for this time, but the police pulled him over. Uncly is super-polite and respectful, especially to police. They ran his info.

They arrested him--he called the family, and told Poppy the cops told him he had two outstanding warrants. He couldn't imagine what for. WAY way back in the day, Uncly spent a considerable amount of time in "The Reformatory". It has made him into a strange person, given to strange habits like obsessive neatness and personal cleanliness, and way back in the day, he's done some other stuff that while against the law, was never of the violent sort. But he's been straight (relatively speaking) as an arrow for probably 15 years... and we've known him at least 20 or so.

The Professor went down and got his keys and moved and parked the car. The policeman all thought he was a gentleman, and that he should be out in a few hours. But he ended up in Central Booking. He wasn't released until late last night.

He had two outstanding warrants.

One was for his muffler. The other was for walking a dog in Marcus Garvey Park without a leash. Murphy was a large Rottweiler, who used to crouch in the corner of the gated brownstone he lived in, and jump out at people and bark when they least expected it. It was as if he did it on purpose, just for his own amusement. We used to sit and watch him do it, and laugh when people screamed and ran, because there was no way Murphy could get out. And when Murphy was out, he was extremely gentle and pleasant. Murphy was Uncly's brother's dog, but Uncly cared for the dog.

Murphy has been dead for at least four years.

For these two outstanding warrants, the police arrested a 62 year old black man, and kept him overnight. He had to go before a judge and everything.

So you tell me... does this make any sense???

Comments

cyclon m said…
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Job said…
I HATE our system!!! And I HATE prejudice!!!!! Makes absolutely no sense to me...
Regina said…
Ditto what Jacqui said -this makes absolutely no sense. And then people who DO break the law and DO hurt people are out in like 15 minutes with a slap on the wrist. It just is NOT right!
Ros said…
Of course it makes no sense, but it doesn't surprise me at all. I'm the pragmatic one. One of my kids got pulled over driving to the high school this morning. Of COURSE he doesn't have a license. Despite getting mouthy, he didn't get arrested. He & I agreed that after him getting mouthy, we were pleasantly surprised that nobody "found" weed or a drop gun in the back seat. Or punched him.
Julie said…
It's a crappy system. Something similar happened to my step-brother a few years ago. He got in a fender-bender and HE called the cops to make a report and be all official about it. When the cops came they ran both drivers' licenses. My s-brother's came back saying there was a warrant against him. Despite the fact that he has an exceedingly common name - I mean think of THE MOST common first and last name you can and put them together and that's him - they assumed that he must be the person in question and arrested him.

He spent the weekend in prison before they discovered the warrant was against another person with the same name. Ridiculous.

I'm sorry Uncly had to go through such monumental BS.

I swear every time the Bull gets behind the wheel of the car (particularly at night, particularly if he's driving through Harlem or the SBronx), I worry that he'll wind up caught up in some crazy, cop nonsense. They pulled me over once because they thought he was driving with a suspended license (it was a stupid mix-up) and they swarmed around the car and scared the crap out of me. Fortunately Sugar, who was a baby at the time, slept through the whole thing.

It SUCKS.
onesillymama said…
Argh... no, it doesn't make sense. Let's arrest an older man on non-violent warrants instead of dealing with actual CRIME. I'm so sorry this happened to Uncly. It is so unfair.

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