None of the people behind that fence got put into a police car.

The one-year anniversary is coming up of my day as a domestic terrorism suspect. I almost wrote a diary about it at the time, but because I’m white (yeah, my paternal grandmother was on the Dawes Rolls, but in America you are what you look, and I look white) I thought it might come off as somehow diminishing the constant and real threat against those living while not-white in America. That is certainly not the purpose of this diary. This was a bad thing that happened, not a systematic pattern of marginalization and abuse. That said, I’m still a little raw about it a year later and I’m still a little troubled at the notion of what happened to me happening to others.

I work at a research institution surrounded by, but not part of, a major university. I’m in charge of a department, and dress accordingly. A year ago at this time I was fifty-six years old. My wife tells me I look much younger, but my wife kind of likes me. It was hot outside, so I wasn’t wearing a jacket as I walked across the urban arboretum that surrounds our building, which made my black shirt very visible. I’d later be told the shirt was the problem, that and the fact that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I didn’t react immediately to the shouts for me to stop because I’d passed and been passed by dozens of college students. I did turn to look when an expletive was added. Two policemen were running toward me. One had his pistol out, though in fairness it was pointed down. The other had his hand on his gun. The one with his gun out was easily twice my size. The second was a little smaller than the first. The bigger one shouted for me to lay flat on the ground. I did, my legs in the circular drive that leads to our building, my torso and face in the grass. As the two officers closed, I asked them what was going on. Politely. Deferentially, even. I knew I hadn’t done anything.

Except.

I remember someone (and if anyone remembers who that someone was, please tell me) saying that there were two kinds of people. The kind whose first thought when they heard a siren was “I wonder what bad thing the police are coming to take care of” and the kind who thought “are they after me?” I grew up poor in downtown Kansas City, and I’ve always been the second kind. So, what I was really thinking was more like “I haven’t done anything…have I? What are they getting me for, and why do they think I did it?”

Didn’t really matter. They didn’t answer. The big one put his knee in my back and his hand on the back of my head, told me to put my arms behind me. The other one put his face as close as he could to mine and said “What did you put in the envelope, huh? Tell us what you put in the envelope.”

I asked what envelope, but they didn’t answer that, either, just cuffed my hands behind my back while two police vehicles with lights flashing and sirens blaring rolled up the driveway in front of the place where I’ve worked for twenty-four years. By this time there was a crowd gathering. Before long the CFO of our organization would be there along with twenty or so of my co-workers and dozens of college kids. It seemed most likely to me, at that moment, that there had been a drug sale. Then it occurred to me that it might have been a threatening letter, ransom demands, blackmail, pornography. I went through a lot of possibilities while the now half dozen police surrounding me discussed how they’d gotten him and were going to take him down for identification. Our CFO, who I have known for most of those twenty-four years, told the police I worked at the building we were in front of (I’d been telling them the same thing but no one was listening to me). Later I’d find out they told her I was a suspect in connection with an incident of domestic terrorism.

They lifted me from the ground and slapped me face-down over the hood of one of their vehicles. They demanded information about what was in the envelope and why I’d given it to “her” while they emptied my pockets, patted me down and stuffed me in the backseat. The “interrogation” continued as they drove me to a nearby police station. They asked about what was in the envelope, why I’d put it there, and why I’d given it to someone. I asked what was going on, politely as I could, pointed out that I’d been outside my office, where plenty of people could confirm my presence, no more than ten minutes. Finally, the one who wasn’t driving told me they were taking me to be identified by the women I’d given the envelope.

Initially that made me feel better, because I hadn’t given an envelope to anyone. Then it made me feel worse, because I’d heard one of the policemen say that I matched the description. What if the women identified me? After the policeman told me where they were taking me, he asked if there was anything I wanted to say now.

And look, I know I’m getting up in years, but the belligerence, the sneering, the testosterone fueled puffery of these men, none of them over forty, was sickening. I don’t know if it was meant to intimidate me. It didn’t. It pissed me off. It pisses me off right now as I write this. It was as though the point was to get a rise out of me. And no, I’m not saying this is universal. A few years past my wife and I were in a major automobile accident and the officers who responded were solicitous above and beyond the call of duty. But it was certainly the situation that day, and it wasn’t a tactic, designed to get me to say something incriminating. It was a provocation, intended to get me to do the wrong thing.

And the me I was at twenty-six probably would have.

They didn’t put me in a line-up, just yanked me out of the car and had the two women step outside of the station to look at me. When I looked in their direction the beefiest of the policemen surrounding me slammed his palm into my shoulder and barked at me to look at him, not them. To “just look in my eyes.”

Then one of the women said, “no, that man’s old.”

The most belligerent of the police vacated the vicinity without another word to me, leaving me with an officer who uncuffed me and asked me if I had a way back to where they’d picked me up. I pointed out that I didn’t even have a phone, or keys, or my wallet, or any of the other things they’d confiscated from me. He heaved a heavy sigh and we stood in silence for a moment before he said that he didn’t know who had my things, but he’d see what he could do. He got on his radio. I don’t know what was said, but his expression suggested the conversation wasn’t pleasant. When he got out of the car he told me the officer who had my things was on his way and that as soon as I got them he would drive me back to work. We didn’t talk to each other on the trip, but he also didn’t just drive me back. He escorted me (even at this point he verbally insisted I go through doorways ahead of him) to the office of the President of the institution where I’m employed. Our CFO was waiting there as well.

They had already contacted our law firm, and the law firm had already contacted the police.

The officer apologized, more to them than to me, stressing that I perfectly matched the description they’d been given, I was on foot, and I was in the area. I finally got to find out that the women worked in a mail room on the other side of campus (about a half mile from where I was handcuffed), had been given an envelope by a man wearing a black shirt, and one woman had been taken to the hospital with some sort of “severe reaction”. I said something about how if I had to be arrested at least being arrested for terrorism would make a good story. The officer exploded into a veritable torrent of assurances that I had not been arrested, I had only been detained.

That was when our CFO told him that she needed to escort him off our property.

The following day our President called me to her office to tell me that there had been no terrorist incident, that the timing of the envelope’s arrival and the woman falling ill had been coincidental, and that the only way in which I matched the description the women had given was the color of my shirt. She had asked our lawyers if there were any avenues for them to pursue but apparently police are given very wide latitude in direct pursuit of a suspect.

So, I was threatened with a gun, roughed up, bullied, and humiliated in front of colleagues and friends. Not a drop in a thunderstorm compared to what others get every day, but still enough that I’m angry a year later.

Learned that it doesn’t matter that you look nothing like what witnesses described if the cops in question feel like grabbing you, that it doesn’t even matter if you couldn’t have reasonably had time to get from the place where the thing happened to the place where you are. Learned that being handcuffed, searched, and taken to witnesses to be identified isn’t the same as being arrested. And yeah, I get that them browbeating me while not reading me my rights had to do with that distinction being so important to them. Discovered that immediate compliance doesn’t keep a three-hundred-pound jackass from sticking his knee in your back and pushing your face in the dirt, then relaxing there for five minutes while he chats with his buddies.

Got to find out just how wonderful a place I work, but I already knew that, it’s why I’m headed toward the end of a third decade here. Had one coworker tell me she knew I hadn’t done what they said because it would have been such a stupid crime, and if I was going to commit one it would have been much cleverer. That was…sort of nice? Get to hear my wife growl every time she sees a cop. And that’s definitely nice, because those growls are for me.

Now, because of this wonderful place, I’m getting to put the story down in writing.

Hope it makes me a little less angry.

Update: Wow. As I was writing this I was afraid I was being a timorous old man. This was such a minor thing compared to the horrible things we see and hear about every day. Thank you all so much for being so nice.

It also occurred to me that this is sort of a story of privilege. Because of the place I work and the kind of people who work there I wasn’t alone and abandoned. I think I need to think on that.