When They See Us Terrorized
Silverback's Note: There are no “When They See Us” spoilers ahead.
My mom and I were shopping at the Kings Plaza Shopping Center one afternoon after school. Kings Plaza is the largest indoor shopping center in the borough of Brooklyn and was often buzzing with traffic.
We were on the second level near the movie theatre, when seemingly out of nowhere, men in powder blue uniforms came flying from yards away. Now first they were walking, then started sprinting furiously. When they got closer, I could see the print on their badges: N.Y.P.D.
My mother firmly yanked me out the way, as I felt the blue wind of those men breezing by.
“Andy, look at me!” she said frantically. “Whenever you see police running like that after someone, you make sure you walk the other direction, ok? I don’t want them to hurt you.”
I’ll never forget that moment near the old movie theatre in the Kings Plaza. It was the first of many “talks” my mom would have with me about the police. But more importantly it was also the first time I would associate the NYPD uniform with one emotion: fear.
Decades later my fair-skinned Hispanic mother would admit to me that growing up with her sisters and cousins in Puerto Rico that she had no idea how to raise dark-skinned boys.
My dad, an immigrant from the small island of Grenada, didn’t have a much better idea on how to raise first-generation American Black men either.
My parents were still very much rooted in their West Indian cultural ways and lived somewhat outside of the tense race relations that dictate American society. And yet, they
instilled a healthy fear of the NYPD into me from a young age.
Why?
I was born in the County of Kings in January of 1986. New York City in the late 1980s was no walk in the park. Nevertheless the city had it’s bright spots: The New York Football Giants and the New York Mets both won titles that year in their respective sports. The American economy, lead by a booming Wall Street, was thriving. However, a dark cloud hung over the city with the NYPD reporting almost 2,000 murder cases and over 5,400 rape cases in 86’.
These murder and rape cases would continue to soar well into the early to mid 1990s due to a myriad of failures at the State and Federal levels.
Mom and I would often sit down in the living room after I finished my homework to watch the evening news together. I couldn’t wait for the sports newscast so I could watch the highlights and see the scores.
Sometimes, the local evening news was filled with dreadful news story after the other. My mom would often change the channel in disgust of the seemingly endless horrific news cycle. I’d have to beg her to change the channel back to the newscast so I could see how much the Knicks lost by.
The seeds of these dreadful news stories were subconsciously planted into my brain and would later blossom into full-blown terror. At that age, I didn’t know what crime was but I could see that the men in the powder blue uniforms were taking people away in handcuffs or covering dead bodies with white sheets.
In March of 1990, my brother Jeremy was born.
That meant two Black boys for my parents to raise. As for me, I dove headfirst into my new role as big brother. The role gave me a sense of purpose. I was going to be his protector and a role model for good in this world.
Later that year, teenage boys Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise were on trial for the alleged attempted murder and rape of a female jogger in Central Park.
This notorious trial is the focus of award-winning director Ava DuVernay’s critically acclaimed mini-series, When They See Us.
The four part mini-series — which is currently streaming on Netflix — does an outstanding job of humanizing the individual backstories of the five young men whose lives were forever changed by the events that took place in Central Park that evening.
In my twenties, I had become enthralled by the details of the case. The more I read, the more I was pulled into the case. I could see myself in those five young Black and Hispanic boys from underserved communities.
I read Sarah Burns book The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding, the accompanying 2-hour documentary by the same name, and anything else I could digest about the case.
I could understand the mistakes that their parents made. I could empathize with the gripping terror that those boys felt while being coerced into a confession. I could understand that women all around the city wanted justice for the brutal rape of the jogger that night.
I began watching When They See Us, less interested in the details of the story and more interested in how DuVernay would bring the story to life.
I pressed play on Netflix and laid down on the couch, honestly more focused on my Instagram feed than I was the television screen. I know how this tragic tale ends, afterall.
Almost five hours later, as the final credits on the fourth episode scrolled across my television screen around 2 a.m., I found myself feeling an overwhelming sense of terror. I was no longer laying down and I was seated straight up just sitting there in silence. Sheer. Abject. Terror.
If I’m being transparent, I wanted to curl my 250-pound frame into a ball and cry.
The books and documentaries that I had previously consumed didn’t include the raw emotion that the mini-series evoked through the actors portrayal of the boys that became known as the Central Park 5. Specifically, the terror inducing scenes of Korey Wise’s (masterfully portrayed by actor Jharrel Jerome) experience in the New York State penitentiary system. The fear that I’ve walked around with since I was seven years old had come to life in the form of motion picture. The terror was in my living room.
In 2000, I was a 14-year-old sophomore playing for my high school’s junior varsity basketball team. I was the same age as Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson upon their arrest and interrogation by the NYPD back in 1990.
After one early afternoon pre-season conditioning workout in Marine Park (a predominantly white Brooklyn neighborhood) , a few of my teammates and I were ambling towards the bus stop on Avenue U when an NYPD police car drove onto the curb directly in front of us.
Two white police officers jumped out. They reached for guns. Pointed them right in our direction. I’ll never forget the sight of the barrel. Or the sounds. The piercing anger behind the commands these adult men were shouting.
I was frozen.
Andy, look at me!
All I could hear was my mother.
You walk the other direction, ok?
But I couldn't just walk away — not with the morbid abyss of a gun staring me in the face like an open-ended question: Is this when I die like the folks on the news?
The officers put their guns back into their holsters. They lined us up to be frisked on the sidewalk in broad daylight for passersby to see. Following their commands, we spread our legs and put our hands behind our head.
I don’t know if you’ve been frisked by the police before but a grown man checking my balls while my hands were behind my head was not something that I was used to as a teenager.
After frisking us, the officers offered no explanation of why they stopped us and got back in their car and drove off.
At this time, I was now the eldest brother to three younger siblings. I had pride in the fact that they looked up to me and I was a good student-athlete that spent most of my free time in church. My parents raised me to be a good kid.
I immediately went home to tell my mom about my experience coming home from practice. I felt emasculated and embarrassed to have had this experience in such a public way but this was life as a Black boy passing through a predominantly white neighborhood in Brooklyn. But I just accepted that as reality. It’s as if I had been programmed to passively allow my dignity and Constitutional rights to be violated.
We had become accustomed to seeing white officers engage with adult Black men in this manner in our own communities so we didn’t collectively think much of the interaction with the NYPD that afternoon.
You know, to this day, I’ve never called on the NYPD? Never in my 33 years of life have I picked up the phone to call the police.
Not even once.
Not because of the lack of need for law enforcement. No, I’ve been in situations where I probably could’ve used some assistance. But there I have been too many times where I’ve seen police officers rush to the scene of a crime and leave an innocent Black body lying dead on the floor.
So I’ll pass on the phone call, thanks.
Maybe I’ve never called because I remember listening to my family talk about the time when the police beat my dad so badly that he had to be hospitalized in the 80s. Apparently he got too “mouthy” with the officers.
Maybe I’ve never called because of the time when a team of officers unlawfully entered my parents’ home. Apparently the music was too loud.
Maybe I’ve never called because I read the news articles about Amadou Diallo (99’), Sean Bell (06’), Ramarley Graham (12’), Kimani Gray (13’), or Eric Garner (14’). Apparently they were all too dark skinned, too male.
Maybe I’ve never called the police because my mother taught me how to stay safe.
I don’t want them to hurt you….
This is the terror I walk around with every day. The moment I walk out of my apartment, the checklist rolling through my head is the same: Phone, wallet, keys...terror.
It’s something I can’t seem to shake. I don’t feel safe in my own body.
In 2014, the City of New York, settled with the Central Park 5 for $41 million dollars, which is about $1 million dollars for every year they collectively sat behind bars for a crime they clearly did not commit.
However, for every Antron, Kevin, Yusef, Raymond, and Korey, there are thousands of kids from underserved communities that were or are currently sitting in NYC jail cells for crimes they did not commit.
I could have been one of those kids in the park. I was lucky. I mean, what if the Central Park 5 was actually the Marine Park 5?
One sunny afternoon a few years ago, I was standing in the street dressed in a tailored gray suit trying to hail a yellow cab. I had just lead a business meeting with my boss, when Korey Wise walked by us.
I immediately recognized him in the crowd and stopped talking to my boss as I locked eyes with Korey.
We exchanged “the nod” of Black recognition and as I turned my gaze back to my boss, he asked, “What was that about? You know that guy?”
“Yeah, there but for the grace of God, go I,” I replied.
There but for the grace of God, go I…