I have been getting e-mails from various readers of this blog over the past few months. In keeping with my commitment to try to feature more voices from people who are directly impacted by the PIC, I want to share the following story that I received this week. I asked the young man who reached out to me for permission to post his words here. He agreed. I hope that everyone who reads this will think of a way that you might help a young person in your own neighborhood to escape the clutches of our racist, classist, and heterosexist criminal legal system.

Here are his words:

I’ve overcome everything in my life, from growing up and attending underfunded public schools to eventually dropping out and continuing my schooling on my own. I’ve had two major surgeries before I was 17 and struggled through a period of intense depression. Now I’m a struggling college student trying to attain his first BA in Biology and eventually my masters, I hope to be a biochemist one day.

The only problem is that I was born into the wrong neighborhood, the wrong income bracket, and most importantly the wrong skin color.

I’m a Hispanic male teen between the ages of 16-25, standing 6’0 tall. To the police in my neighborhood I’m not a student or a lifelong community member, I am simply another suspect. I’ve been pulled over and harassed for riding my bike in my own neighborhood, and 8 months ago I was arrested down my very own street. Caught in a police perimeter, I was subject to various police pulling their weapons on me and my friend, while helicopters buzzed overhead. Then a police car holding the victim pulled up 40 ft away and she identified the two hispanic males who had robbed her house earlier, she identified me and my friend, no one else was ever brought before the victim except us two. It didn’t matter that this police perimeter was not for the burglary suspect but actually for a armed gunman. It didn’t matter that I didn’t fit the clothes description given by the victim, or that she was “94% sure” whatever the hell that means.

It only got worse, at our preliminary trial, I brought my witness who I had been with until she dropped me off near my home. In court, a police officer from her neighborhood took it upon himself, 5 months after the fact, to ID her as the third suspect. It didn’t matter that the ID was for a male driving a car that none of us had access to or that before being ID’d the victim said to police she did not recognize anyone in the courtroom, she was still interviewed brought back in, and once seen next to an officer the victim changed her mind and gave a positive ID. She was promptly arrested and is now my co-defendant.

Now I am out 9,000 dollars that was aimed to my college tuition, I have no witnesses, and I’ll be held to account for my actions in 2 weeks. The only crime I was guilty of was being the first Hispanic male seen by police, to justify the excessive use of police resources and time, the many helicopters, countless police cruisers they have been twisting the facts of our case to justify a conviction.

The system has aimed to take my freedom, to make me another statistic. I am fighting to stay free, to hold onto my rights which can be stripped away if I was to be labeled a felon. But the system may win. Freedom to me is the pursuit of enlightenment and attaining a higher education. Regardless, if I am found not guilty, they have already taken steps to cripple my freedom. I’ll be forced to work a dead end job to pay off my bail and pay back my parents, to work to rebuild what the system took from me, the chance to actually become something.

This is just another story to add to the epic of injustice.

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  By Luke, February 21, 2011 @ 11:28 pm

  Wow, this is a powerful story, thanks for posting.

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