When I went to check my social media the other day I saw that my brother’s girlfriend had posted a panicked, slightly ambiguous message saying “I am so worried, I cannot find him and he was supposed to meet me at 6pm last night….” This is how I found out my brother had disappeared.
When I contacted her, she told me her gut feeling was that something bad had happened. Sure enough the next day she let me know that he’d been arrested. Maybe this sounds callous, but I was not entirely surprised; my brother is known for his outspokenness and contempt for the actions of the police, especially through social media. He also lives out of his van near UCSB, and the police in Isla Vista are notorious for their boredom and therefore over-exertion of their power in this community.
The story I heard was that an officer attempted to stop my brother as he was skateboarding, accusing him of being involved in a hit and run. This officer had no warrant, so presumably he also had no evidence to support this claim. My brother skated around him, as he is aware of the police force’s dislike of his presence on “their turf,” and was confronted by two other officers. The three of them ganged up on my brother and beat him. They then charged him for resisting arrest and attempting to assault and officer. I’m not saying he’s fully free of guilt – I know that he was likely not very respectful of this unwarranted attack on his person, but the whole situation stinks of premeditation and strategic manipulation of the law.
How is this justice?
Men have used power to control others for a long time. Our justice system seems to be built around a demand for obedience to the law and domination of those who disobey. In our book The Word 2.0 we take our reader back to Jesus’ time, when these same principles were practiced even then. A masculine-led justice system, according to Jesus, is an unbalanced one. The feminine aspect of handling transression, as mentioned by Mary (Jesus’ mother), is mercy.
What about when the police are wrong? When an individual or group stands against the accepted parameters of society, their actions represent two things simultaneously: Activism and Rebellion.
This systematic use of power in the name of subjugation, the ego and status quo is apparent in our history from Martin Luther King Jr’s arrest to the current Black Lives Matter movement. What I hear from a lot of people is their fear that we are witnessing a transition into a police state. I certainly hope not, but what I am seeing is the need for a change in how civilians and our police force interact with one another. All too often we see violence carried out from a place of fear, and what we don’t see enough of is respect and mercy.
My brother’s court date is coming up and I am certainly curious to see what these police officers have to say about what I see as an unjust set-up. Stay tuned.
Check out The Word 2.0 to see some history behind our current stance on justice.
Happy to Feed you Food for Thought,
Sonya
