Last week, at 6 p.m. on the evening of the Milwaukee police officer’s fatal shooting, I was en route to a friend’s Bay View apartment for our weekly dinner-TV hang session. With a tote filled with food and a bottle of wine in hand, just yards from the duplex where he lives, two MPD bicycle cops approached behind me, seemingly to the same destination.
They told me to stand back with that certain insistence. I called my friend. He had been watching us from his upper flat window and suggested I just come up. At that point, the two officers had drawn their pistols and were on the porch. It seemed like an inopportune moment to go in, I said. One of the officers told me to clear the street. I withdrew several dozen yards and observed as the police pointed their weapons towards the house while knocking and ringing the doorbell. My friend called 911 to ask what was happening and say he was in the upstairs apartment and afraid.
At first they told him to go down to meet the officers. When he mentioned they had drawn their guns, he was told to “shelter in place.” More police arrived. My friend called the local MPD district HQ, explained his situation and was told to “let the police do their job.” Unbeknownst to him, his landlord’s wife was downstairs and had also noticed the police with drawn pistols in their yard. More and more police arrived. Eventually, the woman appeared outside. Her husband arrived shortly thereafter, as had an unmarked police vehicle with a crew that unpacked an assault rifle.
Then my friend was told to come down with his hands up. He complied, descending the stairs with four pistols pointed at him. The police, now numbering well over a dozen, streamed into the house at the ready with guns pointed. My buddy would later remark he had never had so many people in his one-bedroom apartment, even for an Oscar Party. At some point, nearly 40 minutes later, an “all clear” was called and the tactical operation ended; guns were re-holstered. There was a palpable sigh of relief. I was allowed to approach.
As it turns out, someone had reported a noise that sounded like a gunshot coming from the house. Of course, no one thought to ask my friend when they called 911 if he had heard anything. (Neither he nor the landlord’s wife had.) Perhaps tensions were heightened due to the police shooting that had occurred only an hour before. But, watching the surreal scene unfold, with ever more police arriving with guns drawn, I kept imagining the worst-case scenario. My friend is diabetic and wears an insulin pump. Had he absentmindedly reached for it when he came down the stairs would it have been mistaken for a weapon? Fortunately, he is white and about as intimidating as a librarian.
Still, despite the happy ending with no shooting, “ope” or otherwise, observing the events was traumatizing. It made me reflect on our lives in the unrelenting light of our current national state of pervading fear. We shouldn’t have to feel afraid, especially as a minority…all the time.
