To the Editor:
Hello, Northside Neighbors. I’d like to share with you an interaction I observed between one of my neighbors and an officer of the Madison Police Department. This experience illustrates something very important about our city.
Robert Green has lived in my neighborhood for about five years, in a neat little three-bedroom house on Sheridan Drive. Last autumn he bought a beautiful, bright yellow, used convertible. His wife’s car was in the driveway, and his garage was a workshop, so he parked on the street. The ordinance about on-street parking in Madison states that your vehicle must be moved on a regular basis; Rob didn’t want to get a parking ticket, so he hopped in the driver’s seat and did a U-turn, parking on the other side of the street. Ticket averted.
A police officer was driving past just as Rob put the car in park. He pulled up next to Rob, rolled down his window, and said, “I noticed that you just drove your car without a license plate.” Rob explained about avoiding the parking ticket, mentioned that he’d be going in to get the car registered later the next day, and wouldn’t be driving it until then. The officer accepted the explanation, and gave Rob a wave as he drove away.
Confession time: Rob doesn’t exist, and I made up his story. Now I’m going to tell you what really happened, and tell it straight. This event happened, but it didn’t happen to the fictional Robert Green on Sheridan Drive. It happened to one of my Black neighbors. I didn’t get the man’s name; I’ll call him “Lamar”.
I was returning home from a walk through Warner Park, when I passed an MPD patrol car parked in the private driveway of an apartment building. Lamar’s bright yellow convertible caught my eye as he turned it around, and I looked up just in time to see the excited expression on the police officer’s face when he, too, noticed. The police SUV pulled into the street, lights flashing, nose-to-nose with Lamar’s car. The officer approached and told Lamar he’d just broken the law. Lamar reacted as anyone would; he explained that he was trying to avoid a ticket for parking in one place for too long, and that he hadn’t yet had a chance to get plates on the car. The police officer asked Lamar to get out of his car, and after some protest, he did. Two more police cars arrived. Lamar reacted with restrained frustration. If it had been me, I’d have protested in exactly the same way.
Other Black neighbors came out to watch and film the interaction. Over the next five minutes, the scene became even more outrageous: four police SUVs blocked the road, seven police officers stood near the yellow car, and a completely non-threatening Lamar was in handcuffs. After about twenty minutes, Lamar was let out of the handcuffs, and the police dispersed.
I walked away disheartened, outraged, wondering what I could do. My own protests to the MPD, submitted in writing, had not only been ignored, they’d been scoffed at. But unlike the other witnesses to the detention of Lamar, I walked home without feeling fear for my life or the life of my child; after all, I’m white. I’m well-educated. I even have a sterling credit-rating. The rest of my neighbors went home in a state of extreme stress, after yet another reminder that they live in a heavily-policed neighborhood. In the following days and weeks, their bodies would be flooded with high levels of stress-hormones, draining their energy and suppressing their immune systems. As the recent killing of Corey Ruiz shows, this life-or-death, instinctive reaction is firmly grounded in reality.
It can be jarring to face the reality that the police force that white Madisonians interact with is a completely different police force than the one our Black neighbors encounter. We know Rob’s police officer; he gives out tickets, but more often he just issues warnings. He most likely lives in house in a neighborhood like our own. He’s a “good apple.” The idea that this same police officer was one of the seven who came to occupy Calypso Road that day last fall, making me and my neighbors fear for Lamar’s freedom and even his life, seems unimaginable.
Yet that is the reality for our Black neighbors. Turning around on the street, a drive of less than 20 feet, in a car without a license plate, is not a capital offense. Trying to open car doors with the intention of stealing from them is not a capital offense; neither is fleeing from the police, or having a drug problem, or dealing with brain-chemistry disabilities. Yet in Madison, these are things that can have resulted in the death of our fellow citizens, our neighbors.
Madison had a brief moment of potential for change in 2013, when the “Race to Equity” report came out, outlining the discrimination, segregation, and disparities faced by non-white people living in Madison, Wisconsin. Madison ranked in the top 10 cities in the country when it comes to inequities for Black residents in the country. The schools, the jails, the job and housing markets—all of these reflected a systemic, entrenched race-based problem that goes back well over a century. When the same information was revisited in 2023, the results were the same. The statistics are clear, but if you ask the average White Madisonian if racism is widespread, they don’t think it’s that big of a deal. They certainly aren’t aware of our statistically proven “worst in the nation” status.
It is on us, as people who don’t want racism to exist in our communities, to educate ourselves, and then to take action. The first step toward change may be the most uncomfortable one: we need to confront the roots of racism that come of our background culture and childhood indoctrination. Our libraries are excellent sources for books and other resources that can help us to make those changes within ourselves, so that we can help change our police force and other government institutions. Please help me, my white neighbors, to call for change in the MPD’s treatment of our non-white Northside neighbors.
madisoncommons.org/ten-years-later-extreme-racial-disparities-persist-in-dane-county-highlighting-need-for-state-policy-change/
Kathlean Wolf
