Tag: police

While I was Walking in the Park…

This summer was very sedentary for me. So, as I approached the new school year starting up, I thought about what baby steps I could take to get myself moving again. I decided the easiest thing to do would be to drop the kids off at school in the mornings and then go straight to the park that is close to my home, walk a mile, and then go home. Quick, easy. Once walking a mile becomes easy, I can make the walk longer. And once long walks are no longer difficult I can start adding in more exercises. It’s a plan. 

School started last week for us, and the first day of school, I dropped off kids and headed to Dragon Park. That is not its official name, but on the playground it has a large plastic dragon/water serpent type head coming out of the ground that kids can climb on. The first time I took my kids to this park, about twenty years ago now, my kids immediately started calling it the Dragon Park, and the name stuck. 

The park is very pretty. It has a quarter mile walking trail that encircles a large playground with a pavilion, a rock garden, and a large grassy field that has a little squared off section with workout equipment in it. There’s a tree-lined road that runs right next to the park and on the other side of the road is a small baseball field complex and then at the end of the park is a large parking lot and then a community center and beyond that, a YMCA. 

One side of the park has a road running along it, and the other side of the park has a big thicket-like line of trees that hides the presence of a big creek. The creek collects all the runoff water from the city and is very polluted and there are signs warning people away, but the trees and brush effectively hide its presence. 

The first day I started walking I noticed the other people in the park. There was one other lady walking, the opposite direction of me, and we nodded and smiled as we passed each other. In the pavilion an older couple was sitting at one of the picnic tables. They had a couple duffel bags and other small bags surrounding them, and an older dog sitting with them. They looked like homeless people who had found a place to camp out for the day. 

In the rock garden there was a man sitting in a blue patio chair, the metal kind, that rocks. He had a radio on his lap and I could hear some distant voice giving the news for the day. He also had a bag with him and gave the appearance of someone sitting out on their back patio as they enjoyed their morning coffee. Except that he was rocking back and forth so quickly in his chair that all sense of peace was shattered. Probably another homeless person. 

As I passed the little exercise equipment square I saw a younger woman wearing only a bra and some pants. She was sitting on the edge of the square, knees bent, head in her hands. She did not look like she was doing well. I wondered if I should stop and ask if she needed help, but then realized she was holding a phone in her hand and was talking to someone on speakerphone. 

As I kept walking I watched the lady in the bra gather her things and go stand by the road. Waiting for something. I watched another man, no shirt, riding a bike, go up to the man in his patio chair to talk. They seemed to be friends. The older couple with the dog said a friendly hi to me as I passed by and we exchanged greetings. 

Every day that I went back to the park I saw pretty much the same thing. Man rocking in his patio chair. Older couple with their dog, just sitting, always with a friendly greeting. Man on the bike coming to talk to his friend. I didn’t see the lady in the bras any more, but I thought about her. An occasional person also walked the track. 

Then, on Thursday, things had shifted a bit. There was another woman standing at the edge of the rock garden. There was a water spout about waist high that looked like it was supposed to be reserved for Park Services workers. She had managed to turn it on a bit and was washing her legs in the stream. Not very efficiently. More like she was just standing under it, in a daze. The man in the patio chair obviously felt like his space in the rock garden had been invaded and he now had his patio chair under the pavilion. The older couple from the pavilion had set up a tent on one of the play structures and were sitting outside the tent door, on the play structure, looking like they were living their best camping life, dog tucked next to them. 

I made it around one lap and then saw three police cars pull into the parking lot. Six policemen got out and started walking purposefully towards the park. I paused. I’ve been in this neighbohood for a long time and have learned the police have no problem intiating dangerous activities while innocent bystanders are in the area. It’s up to the innocent bystanders to get themselves out of the way. So I paused. Should I leave? Or do I keep walking awkwardly and pretend like I’m not watching them arrest someone? I decided to stay a bit longer and see what happened. 

The policemen walked straight towards the woman under the water faucet and with very little fuss handcuffed her hands behind her back. She offered no resistance and didn’t even seem to be talking. I kept walking. From a distance I watched as they gathered her belongings up into a pile. They were all just standing there talking quietly amongst themselves. The woman also just stood there, hands cuffed, looking like she was not really present in her body. 

What really surprised me was the couple in the tent did not move. Even I know that you can’t set up a tent on a playground, but they seemed unphased by the presence of the police in the park and just continued to lounge outside their tent. 

I kept walking.

Then, as I was going into my last lap, I watched the police uncuff the woman and she slowly wandered away. I watched them go up to the couple in the tent and start lecturing them. The man in the blue patio chair continued to rock under the pavilion. I finished my last lap and headed to my car. 

My husband and I have had several friends experience homelessness and have tried to help them during those times. We have homeless shelters in our city. When we have suggested those to our friends they have had varied reasons for not wanting to go. Couples get separated. They can’t take their pets. They feel unsafe. Constraints on their actions that they don’t feel like complying with. Even if they chose to go to a shelter, it was just for nighttime. During the day they had to figure out where to go. 

I don’t know the answer to homelessness. For myself, I don’t mind homeless people in the park. But, I would have reservations about my young adult daughters exercising there alone. I would not feel comfortable bringing my little kids to play on playground equipment that has tents set up on it. During my twenty years of visiting this park, there has always been someone camped out at the picnic tables under the pavilion, but this is the first time that I have seen people treating the park as if it’s their home. 

I don’t have the answer and so I pray. I pray for hope for the man in the patio chair. For new vision for a future for the older couple. I pray for freedom from addictions and debilitating mental health issues. I pray for wisdom for our city leaders as they try to make our city a good place for all the people who live here. And I pray that I can see people as humans with stories and needs instead of lumping them into a faceless, nameless group called the Homeless. 

Thoughts on the Protests

This past week the DA in our city released the bodycam video of the police shooting of Anthony Thompson Jr at Austin East High School. I watched the presentation the DA gave as she walked through all the evidence, one step at a time, and ended with the conclusion that it was a justifiable action by the police officer and no charges would be brought against the police. Seeing the evidence, as she presented it, I had to agree. Yes. This looks like it was definitely justifiable. 

So, I was really surprised when I started reading FB posts from my black friends from this neighborhood. They had a completely different perspective. They felt that the DA maligned Anthony’s character by bringing up the domestic violence incidents that led to the police being called. They wanted to know why the police did not use a taser or try talking first. They wanted to know why the police did not speak to Anthony from the doorway of the bathroom and ask him to drop his weapons and come out with his hands up. They watched the video and felt that they were seeing the police’s hands on the gun, not Anthony’s, when it was fired. In fact, they were seeing something completely different from me. 

When two people watch the same video and see two different things, you’ve got to step back and realize that vision is not just a physical thing that our eyes do for us. Vision is affected by what is in our minds, our past, our experiences as well. Perspective. We can all see an image, but our perspective is going to tell us different things about that image. 

I think about where we are at in our country. When this incident happened, we were in the middle of the George Floyd trial. The news is frequently posting more and more incidents of police officer shootings that seem to have been avoidable. The experience of people of color in their involvement with the police has led to a feeling of distrust and danger where the police are concerned. 

Since the release of the bodycam videos, our city has seen a couple protests. I watched some video from one of the protests and the things that they were chanting hurt my heart. This is not my perspective. I don’t hold these views. But, I feel like I can understand, a little, where these views are coming from. 

So, here’s the question. Can we lay down our self-righteousness, our desperate need to always be right, and just enter into the idea that other people have different perspectives than us? Can we withhold our judgement for a minute and remember that other people have vastly different stories than we do, and those stories have caused them to see the world in a very different light than us?   

I believe in absolute truth. And I believe the Bible spells out what that truth is. But, when it comes to things like watching bodycam videos of a seventeen year old being shot and then deciding who is guilty and not guilty, I don’t think that falls into right and wrong categories. There is a lot of gray that we have to wade through. Let’s have grace for each other and understanding as we all react to this event in a different way. 

A Glimpse into Inner City Violence

Lately, I’ve been in a contemplative mood. My brain has been downloading stories from my past that I’ve been writing down in order to get them out of my head. I had written this story last week, wondering what to do with it. Then, today I found out two people lost their lives in a shooting last night, a couple blocks from our house. Since the stay-at-home orders began, in March, the gun activity has increased in our neighborhood. We hear gunshots several times a week. Sometimes we call it in. Sometimes we just don’t. Depends on how close it sounds. Anyway, it seemed a good time to share this story which took place in December of 2015. The end result of the events told was the death of our neighbor’s nephew who had been walking home from his night shift at McDonalds.  

Gunshots. Lots of Gunshots. Never-ending Gunshots.

I jerked awake, frozen in my bed as the gunshots went on and on and on. My body seemed to revert back to that childhood belief, if I don’t move a muscle, the monsters won’t see me. A voice was yelling in my head, GET OUT OF BED! HIDE! GET ON THE FLOOR! And I just lay there, frozen, wondering when a bullet was going to hit me. Because, surely those bullets must be aimed at my house. It was so close, my eyes were squinted shut, just waiting to feel the thud of a bullet.

And then…it stopped. 

Silence. 

I lay there for one more second and then my Mom Brain turned on. THE KIDS!! What if a bullet came through the walls and hit one of them??? I jumped out of bed, grabbed my phone and started dialling 911. As I dialed, phone to my ear, I ran out of my room, looked into the bedroom next to mine. Stood in the doorway, listening. Listening for awake children. Listening for signs of distress. 

Nothing. 

I ran into the room, bent over the bed. The boys were asleep. I yanked back the blankets. No blood. No wounds. The operator answered my call. 

Hello. My name is Esther Heneise. I live at *********** and I need to report a shooting. As I was speaking on the phone, my oldest daughter ran out of her room. 

MOM! What was that??

I motioned for her to climb into my bed. I continued to answer the questions on the phone as I paced around the upstairs, checking bedrooms. No. I didn’t know how many gunshots there were, but it went on for a really long time. No, I’m not sure where the gunshots were coming from, but it sounded like it was right outside my house in the street. 

Then I suddenly remembered my nine and eleven year old daughters who shared a room downstairs, what if the bullets had got to them?? I ran for the steps, phone still pressed to my ear. Just as I got to the top of the steps, both girls came running up in a mad scramble. Hanging onto me when they got to the top. WHAT WAS THAT???

I motioned for them to join their older sister in my bed. The three of them huddled together and watched me as I paced around my bedroom. Trying to communicate to the operator what had happened.

The operator asked me if I had seen anyone. Seen anyone? No. I had been in bed! But this made me run to the window. I looked out, my windows giving me a clear view of the little side street that runs past my property. Wait. There were two men outside. I could see them in the road, under the streetlight. I quickly told the operator what I was seeing. Two men, and they are starting to run. There they go! They’re running down my street….Wait, no, they are out of the street now, they’re cutting through someone’s yard, heading towards Magnolia. 

Suddenly, the operator stopped her questions. She said, you’re breathing really fast, are you ok?…..What? Oh. Um. Yeah. I’m just really freaked out. I’m all alone at my house. My husband is gone and it’s just me and eight children. 

We talked a little bit longer and then I hung up the phone. My girls were laying in my bed, the blanket pulled up almost over their heads. Their eyes stared big and round at me. 

I leaned over the bed. Gave them a hug. Here. Just stay here in my bed. Sleep here. I’m going to go and check on the little kids again. I’ll just sleep with the little girls. 

I walked out into the hall, peeked into each bedroom again. Then pulled out my phone again. I tried calling my husband. The phone rang and rang and rang. No answer. True, it was somewhere around 1am in the morning. But, he was also out on a camping trip with our oldest son and his boy scout troop. He didn’t have good reception out there anyway. 

I felt extreme frustration at that moment. Without fail, any time my husband was gone overnight, something momentous happened that I had to deal with by myself. I went and looked out the window of my bedroom again. There were now policemen down there. No flashing lights. No sirens. I could see several officers walking around with flashlights. Our neighbors on the other side of the side street came out of their house. Spoke to the policeman, gestured towards their house. The policeman walked around their house as well, shining their flashlights. 

Then, all the activity suddenly focused into one place. Now they were all there, pointing their lights at the little side road, bending down, looking at something. I stood staring out my window. I had absolutely no desire to go downstairs and look out the windows down there, I had no desire to step out on my porch to see what I could see. At that moment in time, my upstairs felt safe and everywhere else felt dangerous, scary. I continued to watch. I don’t know how long I stood there, but eventually, the policemen all piled into their cars and drove away. 

I wondered if I would ever find out what had happened. 

My big girls had fallen back to sleep and I quietly walked out of the room and headed over to my little girls room. The two and four year old shared a double bed and there was plenty of room for me to climb in. I snuggled up to their warm bodies. Pulled the blanket up high and lay there, wondering how on earth I would ever fall asleep. I prayed. Asking for God’s protection on us. And as I lay there, a surprising peace settled over me, and I slept.