Crime Wave

I had two unpleasant experiences last week. As I pulled into a parking spot outside the back entrance to our home, I noticed a young man standing off to the side, talking on his phone. Four months ago, this wouldn’t have merited a second glance, but there has been a crime wave in our neighborhood lately, including carjackings and muggings. A few of the attacks have included violence. Some of these have been by a single perpetrator, others have involved multiple hoodlums, some criminals have been on foot and some in cars.

There is no nice way to say what follows. Had the young man been visibly identifiable as a religious Jew, a majority of the demographic in our area, I wouldn’t have been worried at all. My only question might have been whether he would come over and offer to help me unload heavy groceries. The other demographic in our neighborhood is black. While this demographic includes many upright, hard-working individuals, the characteristics of young, black, and male are the unifying features of all the recent attackers.

Our community has a volunteer service that patrols the area, serving as additional sets of eyes for the police. These volunteers also make themselves available to anyone feeling threatened. It might be an elderly couple coming home late at night. Perhaps a widow is nervous hearing sounds in her backyard. Call their emergency number and a team of men will quickly show up and be happy to escort you inside or search the perimeter of your house. Since my husband was out of town, I could have called this group, but I felt that would be an overreaction.

Intellectually, I knew that the odds favored the young man I observed having a good reason to be where he was and that he posed no threat. Yet, the downside of being wrong in that assessment could be tremendous. I ended up driving to our home’s front entrance and parking there even though the access when laden with packages is easier from the back. I don’t think that I did the wrong thing. I simply lived in the real world, admittedly for this scenario, a sad one.

Within a few days of that disturbing event, our children arranged for an Uber driver to pick me up so that I could meet one of our daughters for an outing without needing to drive myself. As the driver and I got underway, and after a few minutes of his hemming and hawing, he shared that a neighbor had approached him while he was waiting for me and questioned what he was doing there. The driver was offended at what he perceived to be a racist interrogation. Again, my neighbor was on alert and reacting to the recent spate of crime in the area. On a block where most of the neighbors recognize one another, this driver stood out and, unfortunately, he resembled a demographic that was behaving in a dangerous way. At the same time as I felt terrible for his experience, I understood exactly why my neighbor was uneasy with him idling at the curb.

Two incidents and two innocent men viewed with suspicion. That is unfortunate and damaging. Yet, as long as there are district attorneys, judges, and juries who refuse to charge or punish members of certain groups, and as long as people excuse intolerable actions because of the perpetrator’s skin color, I only see such occurrences increasing. What a sad and unnecessary mess of entirely human making.

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