On Bearing Witness

When I read that Daunte Wright called his mother that night, before the police killed him during a traffic stop over an air freshener, my stomach turned. I felt sick as I remembered that July afternoon in 2016, when I sat in my car waiting for that call back from a loved one in the middle of an encounter with the police.

That was the summer I worked at the call center for the statewide crisis line. Even though I spent all day on the phone I would still call my mom on my way home; I had some company on the half-hour drive after a long day and my mom made sure I got home safe. 

When my mom answered on that day, I immediately knew something was wrong. She sounded out of breath and I could hear someone yelling in the background.

She told me the essentials as quickly as she could: She had been rear-ended, hard, while sitting at a red light. The other driver was refusing to cooperate in the usual exchange of information after a traffic accident, declining to even give their name. The yelling, she told me, was the pedestrian who had witnessed the whole thing and decided to stand there and yell racial slurs at her. 

She said her back hurt and the situation was feeling out of control so she went back to her car and called the police for help. 

She told me one officer had finally shown up just before I called. The officer stopped to speak with the other driver first and when my mom approached to try to speak with her, the officer had told my mom to get back in her car unless she wanted to be maced. 

My mom asked me to wait on the line as the officer finally approached her car. The officer spoke curtly to her, and became irate when she noticed that my mom’s phone was still on a call. The officer, who had threatened the use of pepper spray within seconds of arriving on the scene, began screaming at her to hang up the phone. My mom picked up her phone and told me she would call me right back. 

The line disconnected, and I sat there, not noticing the growing stickiness in the car because I had forgotten to start the car, let alone turn on the air conditioning. 

It’s hard to describe the sort of stunned helplessness in those moments; how deeply you wish that today is not the day this American sickness snatches your family from you.

I refused to cry, and willed myself to be calm and tried to remember everything I had heard before my mom hung up.

When my phone lit up with my mom’s name on the screen, I prayed it would be her voice I heard on the other line. 

I deflated with relief when I picked up and it was her. My hands started to shake as she told me about the rest of the incident.

She told me how the officer had continued to be unnecessarily aggressive with her, didn’t bother to ask her if she needed any medical attention, and spent a considerable amount of time talking with and consoling the driver who had rear-ended her. My mom had decided to leave and drive herself to the hospital to get treatment.

In that moment, I was relieved and I was resentful at how banal and unsurprising the officer’s behavior was.

This was an officer in my hometown where I was pulled over in my own driveway, and where I was pulled over for looking “sinister”. I knew I had been one of the lucky ones who got a call back. 

I am glad that I was able to be bear witness to my mom’s experience and I wish I could say her experience was extraordinary.

In my weariness, I return to this affirmation:

Suffering is not our birthright.