Like everyone else in the world, I got caught up in “Serial” when it debuted in late 2014 and quickly disappeared down the rabbit hole of the Adnan Syed case. When “Serial” was over, I was thinking there had to be more, that there had to be more to know. And there was — if you listened to “Serial” and haven’t ever listened to “Undisclosed,” then there’s still a ton that you don’t know. And that podcast led me to “Truth and Justice with Bob Ruff.”
Bob Ruff is not Sarah Koenig — he is not the masterful storyteller she is. And if you doubt her skills at all, consider this: I am still listening to season 2 of Serial, even though I don’t care one fig about Bowe Bergdahl — not in the way Koenig has been pursuing the case. (Of course, just when I thought we were finally moving in the right directions with the episode “Thorny Politics” it turned out it was the next-to-last episode of the season. Shame. There was hope the show was moving past listening Bowe talk Bowe and Sarah talk Bowe.)
What Ruff is doing, though, is taking a sizable chance because he’s looking into cases that don’t involve someone as charismatic as Adnan, whose innocence is almost undeniable to those following “Undisclosed” and “Truth and Justice.” Ruff’s new cases are aiming to show that you don’t have to like someone, or agree with them, to recognize that an injustice has been done.
One of his new cases involves a young man he knows, Abi, who was pulled over by a police officer for having bad license plate lights. (??) Yeah, so that’s a thing that happens. Here’s a video that shows some of the incident. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out, but there’s one thing that Ruff said in his podcast introducing this case that, to me, is at the heart of the entire debate about police brutality. Ruff said that a police officer’s job is to de-escalate a situation. (Spoiler alert: Telling a kid you’re going to pull him out of the car by his face is not a very effective de-escalation practice.)
When he said that, it reminded me of my vacation last fall to Barbados. We were at North Point, one of the tourist destinations, and I had to run back to the parking lot to find something in our rental car. On the way, a police car rolled into the lot and I took a picture of it because I found it interesting:
It says “To serve protect and reassure.”
A few minutes later, three officers entered the bar area where we were sitting and having some drinks. Two of them had huge guns strapped to their backs (sorry, I don’t know weapons that well) and the other was obviously a sergeant, although I’m not sure what they’re called in Barbados. That sight might have been imposing, but no one seemed alarmed. The guy in charge struck up a conversation with my father, another island native, and he was hilarious.
In the photo above, he’s talking to my dad on the far left, and the military police officers are at the bar. He gave my husband and I some parenting tips that essentially boiled down to never allowing your child to do anything and to never spare the rod, citing his own current experiences with his teenage son. We talked a bit about the American obsession with guns (and boy, what a sobering view of how people in other countries view us, even though he was very funny about it. Even considering the men standing behind him, he couldn’t understand why an average citizen would feel the need to carry such weapons). The other officers were courteous and appropriately deferential to their boss. We talked to those officers for about 20 minutes until they had to roll out.
Now, an encounter like this might not seem like much to you, but it sends a message. “If something happens to you, you can call me,” this exchange says. Right now in our country, people don’t believe that about police officers. Most police officers, including my brother, are good and honest and want to help you, but we tend to hear about the extreme cases. This is both unfair and completely necessary. If you leave a problem unchecked, you get Abi. You get Daniel Shaver, who was shot dead by police in perhaps the most nonthreatening pose a person can take. You get Sandra Bland.
Back in Pittsburgh a couple years back, the police chief there was forced to resign because he had been found guilty of misappropriating department funds. His replacement was Cameron McLay, who was inheriting a force with a few bigger problems than predecessor Nate Harper. There were several allegations and lawsuits about police interacting inappropriately during arrests — cases varying from a young woman being roughed up at a St. Patrick’s Day parade, to a young man whose dreads were pulled out of his head, to a late-night shooting on a busy street in which occupants of two cars were shot at by police. To his credit, the first thing McLay did was to schedule meet-and-greets with residents. I snuck into the back of one, which took place at a predominately black church in the Hill District, a black neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Not to cover it — I just wanted to hear what he had to say, if he would tow the blue line. He surprised me. He didn’t deflect the hard questions about the previous cases, and admitted that officers needed to talk to city resident more, outside of a crime scene, in order to restore broken trust. Just listening to the buzz around me, the attendees seemed hopeful. More than that, they appeared glad to be able to put a name to a face. I approached him afterward and introduced myself, that I was a columnist who had been critical of the department and that I would be watching him. He shook my hand firmly, smiled and said, “Good.”
McLay obviously came into Pittsburgh to de-escalate the situation. It sounds like a small thing, but it is incredibly important that a police officer enter a situation prepared to de-escalate it, to serve, protect and reassure. I believe you can do that and also be vigilant and protect yourself and others in perilous situations. I believe that most officers also believe that. But in many of these escalated cases, we see young people who are either not properly trained or are not ready for the situation they are in — just like Bergdahl, in fact.
I always thought this was a problem that only the police can deal with from within, which in the end is true. But one thing individuals can do is what Ruff is doing — apply outside pressure. He highlights patterns of injustice, but you can advocate for better training for officers, too. You can reach out to the police where you are, outside of the yellow tape, and invite them to a community sit-down.
It’s finally occurring to me that we can all work to de-escalate this situation, and it might sound weird, but it’s time for us to get aggressive about doing that.