There is a long overdue conversation going on in America today, and it’s about the future of policing. People are tired of overreach, tired of the police being outfitted like they’re going to war in our streets, tired of being teargassed and beaten, and yes – for people of color – tired of being targeted and murdered, often for doing nothing at all.
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A world with a drastically reduced police force can be hard for most of us to even picture, and the ideas that could make it happen will sure be tough to wrap our minds around, too.
For most who have been radicalized to this way of thought, there was a watershed moment – a moment a lightbulb went off, and everything you believed about police and policing before goes right out the window.
For one Sean Trainor, that moment was the night he went on a ride along.
A long time ago, when I was younger and dumber, I did a police ride-along with a high school classmate who had gone on to become a cop.
It was one of the most chilling and radicalizing nights of my life. (Thread)
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
He begins with some innocuous but annoying facts, like how the guy had no real work to do so he just drove around putting license plate numbers randomly into the system and hoping something came up.
Two memories stand out to me. The first is how my classmate spent most of the night: rolling around suburban Maryland in a patrol car, punching license plate numbers into a database, looking for excuses to pull people over.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
And anyone who looked “out of place” in a white neighborhood? They definitely got their numbers punched.
My classmate was so bored that he’d punch pretty much anyone’s plate into the database. But he devoted special attention to beat-up cars or drivers who looked “out of place” — which typically meant black or brown drivers in predominantly white neighborhoods.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
This was a boring night. They might have pulled someone over for a broken taillight, but most of the searches came up empty.
Fortunately, few of those searches resulted in traffic stops. I seem to recall my classmate pulling over a guy for a broken tail light. But, for the most part, he spent the night driving around aimlessly.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
To combat boredom (or looking for a fight), he would pull up to other cops’ traffic stops just to see what was going on.
To punctuate his boredom, my classmate would respond to other cops’ traffic stops. When he heard another cop had pulled someone over, he’d turn on his lights and tear off into the night.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
Most of the time he was too late (thank goodness).
Most of the time he’d arrive at the scene of the stop long after the incident had passed. One time, though, the traffic stop was still ongoing.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
On one call though, he was not. The man was pulled over for nothing major, but turned out to be an ex-convict driving with an expired license.
Which I mean…still feels like no big deal.
In this instance, a colleague of his had pulled over a car for some trivial reason — a broken tail light or expired registration — and then discovered that the driver was, as I recall, an ex-convict driving with an expired license.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
He had just recently gotten out of prison, and was in the car with his wife and young children.
The guy (who was white) had gotten out of prison earlier in the week and hadn’t had a chance to renew his license. When he got pulled over, he was driving around with his wife and young kids.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
The original officer didn’t let it go (of course) and he and the ex-convict were talking outside the vehicle when this guy, and a few other cops, too, pulled up to check it out.
Not content to leave this poor guy with a warning, the officer who initiated the traffic stop asked him to step out of his car for a conversation. As they were talking, more and more bored cops rolled up, including my classmate.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
As the driver became more stressed by the onslaught of cops, the original officer began to get aggressive in response.
Not surprising, the situation kept getting more intense. The guy who had been pulled over looked increasingly stressed as more cops materialized. And the cops responded to his stress with heightened levels of aggression.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
Things escalated, as they tend to do when everyone is amped up, and the man ended up face down and handcuffed.
Eventually the scene came to a boil. I don’t know exactly what happened. I seem to recall the guy taking a swing at a cop or raising his voice. Regardless, he wound up face down on the curb, his hands cuffed behind his back.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
His family Completely hysterical.
His family looked on screaming and crying as the cops hauled him away. It had been a short family reunion.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
He was going back to prison for violating his parole, probably. For a while. All because he hadn’t had time to scoot over to the DMV.
As we drove away, my classmate told me that, because this guy had violated his parole, he would likely do a multi-year stint in prison.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
The entire night was just his cop friend trying to drum up trouble.
And that was night: a full shift devoted to manufacturing crime — desperately searching for reasons to pull people over and then harassing people until they snapped.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
The guy he was riding with was just doing his job. In his mind, he was protecting the “good” citizens of his community.
My classmate wasn’t an exception to his department’s rule. He wasn’t a “bad apple.” As he told it, he was doing exactly what his department expected him to do. He saw himself — in fact had been trained to see himself — as a dog protecting sheep from wolves.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
The “bad” people, the “enemy,” though, was almost always someone “other.”
But from inside his car, the sheep receded from view, and all the flesh-and-blood people in his community — and especially the people of color — took on a decidedly wolf-like aspect. He clearly viewed them as enemies and interacted with them as such.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
The takeaway for Sean? They did nothing that night that helped anyone be any safer.
In short, nothing he did made anyone safer. He didn’t protect or defend a damn thing, except white supremacy and class domination. His entire shift had been devoted to profiling, harassing, and intimidating people.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
He feels badly that he didn’t say something at the time, even though he didn’t know any better.
Looking back on it, I feel like shit about that night — I wish I had said something or objected to his behavior. Though, at the time, I had neither the perspective, the words, nor the courage to do so.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
Even though he knows it wouldn’t have made a difference.
But, objectively, I know that nothing I could have said would have made a difference. Even if I had convinced him to quit, someone else would have done his job exactly as he had. The problem wasn’t my classmate. It was the whole rotten system designed to terrorize people.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
And it’s not that guy. It’s not one guy. It’s the entire system.
What I learned that night is that behind every Derek Chauvin or Darren Wilson — behind every dramatic eruption of violence — is a whole universe of pervasive, mundane, and wanton cruelty.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
Just sit with this tweet for a minute, because it’s a lot.
The cruelty isn’t an accident; it’s the point.
— Sean Trainor (@ess_trainor) June 7, 2020
And there it is – just one man’s experience, one man’s opinion.
I guess it’s up to the rest of us to decide if his night is the exception, or the rule – and what we want to do about it now that we know the truth.
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