How Men Become Monsters

My Relationship with the Police, and the Conflict in the Middle East

Recently, I have been struggling to find the motivation to write. It’s not that I haven’t any good ideas, on the contrary, I have a notebook chocked full of essays, and positions that I’m excited about. But for some reason, whenever I open my laptop and try to write, my palms get sweaty, my heart starts to race, and before I can type a single word, every self-doubt possible puts me in a state of paralysis.

In response to this, I talked myself into not “forcing pen to pad” because what I found was that when I forced my writing, I was almost always unhappy with the end result. Instead, I have poured my energy into reading the work of others, spending time with people I care about, and touching grass. But like most children of immigrants with built-in anxiety, issues with perfection, and an unending need to speak up, I knew that it was only a matter of time before I would have to rediscover my voice. Thankfully, I found some assistance from a new author. 

A few weeks ago, I attended an event hosted by the Gathering for Justice. They were hosting a live reading and interview of former police officer, Edwin Raymond. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Edwin Raymond is a 15-year veteran of the New York Police Department (NYPD). He joined the force with the hopes of reforming its reputation and relationship with communities like his and mine, but after years of push-back, and retaliation, he joined 11 other officers in a lawsuit “alleging that supervising officers encouraged cops to meet arrest quotas and the policy targeted people of color.” Things didn’t get better for Edwin, so after 15 years on the force, he retired, ran for office, and published a book titled, “An Inconvenient Cop.”

In “An Inconvenient Cop” Edwin Raymond shared some of his experiences with the NYPD, saying:"

“As a child of immigrant parents in the poor Black neighborhood of East Flatbush, born in the eighties and coming of age in the nineties, I regularly dealt with aggressive policing. Over time, I felt the effect it had on me, my friends, and my community. I saw how it increased the very crime it was ostensibly looking to stop by marginalizing people for the smallest things. I recognized how it severed any potential bridges between the neighborhood and the police. Cooperation between communities and police would serve both parties, but the negative cycle runs on its own momentum. And no one on the inside wants to gum up the works.” 

Reading Edwin's words was a stark reminder of the fraught relationship I had, and still have, with an institution that was made to “serve and protect.” Despite the stated purpose of the police, they have oftentimes felt like the frontlines of a paramilitary force thrown into Black and Brown communities to create terror through force and intimidation. There are some who will read this, or hear about Edwin’s book and roll their eyes, but he tells no lie. I remember growing up in East New York Brooklyn in the 90’s and knowing firsthand what that terror felt like; I know even more intimately the effect it had.

For example, when I was ten, some friends and I wanted to play basketball, but the park next to our house was too dangerous, and our parents wouldn’t let us stray too far from the neighborhood. With no other options, we started playing basketball in front of our building using empty garbage cans as the hoop. This is a ritual that would continue for quite some time. Our garbage can basketball games became so popular we had a small unofficial league, and other kids would join us. On one faithful spring day that all came to an end.

On this particular day, I was outside with my friends Paco, Devon, and Javier. We were in an intense game of 2 on 2, when a cop (We’ll call him Officer Smith)  walked right into the middle of our game. Paco was driving to the hoop and bumped into him. Officer Smith was angry and immediately started cursing at us. I was raised to always be deferential to authority so while I was upset about his reaction, I remained silent. Devon and Javier’s parents always told them to avoid the police, so they did the same.

Paco wasn’t so prepared to let it slide, he dusted himself off and began to address the officer. Before he could get out a complete sentence, Officer Smith punched him in the face, grabbed him by the neck, and slammed him against the wall. Paco was small for his size. His head banged against the wall and started to slump. Smith held him up and kept shouting. We tried to jump in to help Paco, but then Smith pulled out his gun and pointed it at us, my blood ran cold. 

In a matter of seconds, he had us lined up against the wall and was yelling orders our way. I had never had a gun pointed at me, my brain felt foggy, and my heart was beating so hard it felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. I started to cry; Devon tried to calm me down, but that seemed to make Officer Smith angrier. He told us to “Shut the fuck up, you savages have nothing to cry about.” and then searched us for “contraband.” The interaction probably lasted 5 minutes, but it felt like an eternity. After finding nothing on us, he stepped back and told us if he ever saw us again he would “shoot our Black asses and leave us under the bridge on Livonia Ave”. 

We waited until he was gone, and then went to Devon’s house. For a long time, no one said anything. I couldn’t look Paco in the eyes, none of us could. He was supposed to be my best friend, and I let someone hurt him. That was the moment I started to fear and hate the police. Over the years, that hate intensified. Some of that hate was from that experience, but it felt like the police helped to cultivate it. When I was 11, the police murdered my landlord’s son, Patrick. They shot him in the back because they said “he had a gun.”

In ‘97 a group of officers beat up and sexually assaulted a Haitian immigrant named Abner Louima.  After that, it was clear to me that all officers were to be hated, no matter their racial makeup, ethnicity, or background, they were meant to be hated. I had fantasies of bringing them the same pain and terror they brought to my friends and me, I wanted to make them suffer the way they had done to Abner, Amadou Diallo, Shaun Bell, Eric Garner, and countless others. 

In my eyes, no human could inflict such pain and suffering on another person, only something of pure evil could be capable of that kind of malice, and for a long time, I only saw the boys in blue as a force to deal with until they could be destroyed. They were not like me, so they were the enemy. When you are no longer capable of seeing humanity in others, any form of violence and disgusting behavior becomes possible and justifiable.

In his book, Edwin talks about the cause of this cop culture. According to him, “The academy churns out cops who are indoctrinated in the myth of the heroic policeman... Under the banner of public safety, the police force incentivizes its officers to maintain the racial and social order. Cops who won’t engage in this behavior, who want to be valuable contributors to the neighborhood, who want to help the community instead of harass it, are kept knocking around the bottom where they cannot threaten it.” In order to strive in the force, officers had to look at us as less than them, and because of their treatment, we looked at them the same. 

Once you have crossed that line, and you only see an enemy in front of you, the fear driving that desire can turn you into what you hate the most. I don’t still feel that same hatred for the police, but I would be lying if I told you I trusted them; I have just lived long enough to know that life is complicated and humans are imperfect. 

This complicated and painful relationship with the police has caused me to reflect a lot. As a Black man in America, I am all too familiar with feeling unsafe in my own skin while trying to navigate a world that goes out of its way to tell me I don’t matter, it takes a lot of emotional and mental energy to see the good in people, but every day I try my best to do it, because I understand what happens when you lose the plot. 

The New York Police Department as an institution, and police all over this country, have long ago lost the plot. As a result, people on both sides of that relationship reap that spoiled fruit.

I guess that brings me to what I have been struggling to say. As I write this, we are witnessing a genocide taking place in the Middle East. On October 7th, 2023 the terrorist group Hamas launched a devastating attack on Israel, firing rockets into the city, killing hundreds of people, and taking Israeli hostages. Israel responded with a “barrage of airstrikes that have decimated the Gaza Strip, leaving more than 12,000 residents dead, injured, or displaced.” The government warned citizens of Palestine to “evacuate” before these strikes took place, but Israel controls the entire country, and the citizens live in what the United Nations has described as an “open-air prison.”  Their literal movements are controlled by Israel’s government and military. This has resulted in the death and destruction of thousands of people, over 1500 of whom are children. 

Like Black people, Jews have faced centuries of persecution, discrimination, and open violence. For many the desire to protect their people and a land they call their own comes before anything. But like the officers who are trained to mistrust, abuse, and hate my community, and my friends and I who grew to hate, fear, and mistrust the police, the Israeli government has become the thing it fought so hard to protect its people from, and have made it a policy position to dis-enfranchise another group of people. I know that most people in Israel, and Jewish people across the world do not support these disgusting policies. Just like I now understand that there are officers within the force who do not agree with their practices, but feel powerless to change things.

I know what it feels like to be compelled to speak, but afraid of what it might cost you. I realize now my writer's block was driven by the fear of what might happen if someone I love reads this and somehow takes these words as supporting violence against Jewish people. Of course, this is far from my message in this piece. Despite those fears, I have seen what hatred does to the soul, and how it destroys the light in people. We can’t be whole if we look the other way as others suffer; we aren’t truly living if we use the energy in our bodies to hate others. In Valarie Kaur’s book, “See No Stranger” she says that “Violence is a rupture. It makes a hole, not just the damage it inflicts on the body of a person, but the pain it causes the body of a people.” Humans aren't naturally hateful, we are not murderers, bigots, or monsters. We’re just creatures living on this earth navigating as best as we can.

Sometimes we get it right, on other occasions, we fall short. At this moment our sisters and brothers in the Israeli government have lost the plot, so we must come together and remind them of what’s most important. If we refuse to speak up, and the violence doesn’t end, we will all lose our humanity, and this will be a world of humans cosplaying monsters.