You Have The Right To Be A Fully-Clothed, Pertinacious, Clever A-hole

A Black-Eyed Story

Titus Kaphar | Another Fight For Remembrance 2014

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You have the right to question a police officer’s actions.

You have the right to tell a police officer exactly what you think about their actions. 

You have the right to continue doing any activity if isn’t illegal, even if a police officer tells you to stop doing said activity – ie., you do not have to stop smoking your cigarette; you do not have to turn down your music; you do not have to stop doing your job conducting a high school band. 

In many instances, you have the right to even walk away from a police officer if you’re not being detained or arrested.

You have the right to flip off a police officer.

You have the right to sleep in your car. Sure, it’s illegal to do it on other people’s property and in some public spaces, but a police officer can’t arrest you for sleeping in your car.

You have the right to ask the police to leave your home or your property if they do not have a search warrant or a reason to be there. 

You have the right to refuse to answer a police officer’s questions. 

You have the right to put on clothes and shoes if you’re stark naked or in your robe or in your pjs while being arrested. If there’s no threat of violence, there’s no reason for a cop to deny this basic human dignity. 

You can yell at a police officer.

You can’t refuse arrest if you’re being arrested but if you’re not being arrested, you can refuse to comply with an officer’s request for ID. However, you do have to give them your real name, address, age, and date of birth if they ask. (**except in Texas. It just passed a law that allows any officer to demand your ID for any reason. See the comments below. I am quite sure it will be overturned.)

You can whip out your cellphone and film a police officer. 

You can be visibly irritated by, frustrated with, and rightly pissed off at a police officer. All your emotions are legal. 

If you’re not under arrest or resisting arrest, you can loudly protest any action a police officer takes against your person. You can say, “Don’t grab me!”, “Don’t push me!”, “Let go of me” “Stop!”, “No.” 

Basically, you have the right to be a complete and utter a-hole if you want to be a complete and utter a-hole to a police officer. I don’t recommend it, but if you know you haven’t committed a crime, in this country, our first amendment gives you the right to say whatever you want and do as you please. 

Just remember, police officers have the right to be complete a-holes too – a-holes with badges, guns, and tasers.

But thank god, not all of us—cops or otherwise—are a-holes. 

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Titus Kaphar | Traveler 2014

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Last week in Alabama, a high school band director was tased and arrested for “refusing to stop his band’s performance,” at a football game. He was harassed, tased and arrested right there in front of his students. 

At the end of the game, for whatever reason, police officers asked the band to stop playing and to leave the stands. The band director was definitely curt with police while he continued conducting the band to play out the last song. During a news conference the band director told reporters: 

I was not trying to be defiant to the police department. I was just trying to do my job, which was previously established before the end of the game… I should have never been tased. It was excessive. No educator should ever have to experience that.

The only time you really have to do whatever a cop tells you to do is if you’re being arrested, or pulled over, or being directed in traffic. But basically, that’s it. If a police officer is pulling you over, you have to comply by pulling over and showing your driver’s license and registration. But that’s it. You don’t have to put out your cigarette, stop eating, turn-off your music, or take off your sunglasses. In most states, except maybe Virginia, you don’t even have to step outside your car.

You pulled over. You got your ticket. That should be the end of it. 

Listen, in this democratic society, it’s hard for a cop to actually do their real job, which is to enforce the law and protect the public. The line is blurred on where those duties begin and where our rights as humans in a democracy end. This foggy gray area has a name. It’s called “contempt of cop.” It’s kinda like someone being in “contempt of court” except it’s not illegal – just a pain in the ass to a cop with a bruised ego. 

A cop with a certain sense of himself might get way out of pocket when a pertinacious, clever, and analytical Black woman (Sandra Bland) who knows both her own mind and her rights refuses to comply with his baseless request for her to put out our cigarette, or to stop filming him. Feeling disrespected (and also outwitted), a cop like that in that particular situation might start throwing out charges that just don’t make any kind of sense simply because he has a badge and a gun. 

Suddenly, his irritant is under arrest, but for what? Irritating him? But it’s not illegal to irritate someone. Resisting arrest? But a traffic stop isn’t an arrest. Assaulting a police officer? But she never touched him. In fact, he touched her first. For disorderly conduct? But there’s nothing disorderly about her answering his questions while sitting in her car and continuing to smoke her cigarette. 

Besides, in the end, he wins. He takes her phone. Opens her car door. Pins her to the ground. Cuffs her. Takes her to jail. The rest of the story is entombed in an eerie and tragic history. 

All week long I’ve thought about the band teacher in Alabama. I keep wondering where our need for his compliance began. Because, if I’m being honest, my first thought was: why didn’t he just do what the cop said? As my grandma used to say, “don’t start none, won’t be none.”

But I know, I know… he didn’t have to “obey” the police if he wasn’t doing anything wrong at all. We all know he didn’t have to stop the band from playing music at an actual football game. It was his job to do just that. 

If he had complied, where would it end? How does a teacher show his students where their rights begin and the police officer’s duties end? 

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Titus Kaphar | Yet Another Fight For Remembrance 2014

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The trooper who pulled over Sandra Bland “accused” her of being irritated, as if being irritated was a crime. 

TROOPER: “You seem very irritated.”

BLAND: “I am. I really am. Because of what I’ve been stopped and am getting a ticket for. I’ve been getting out of the way. You’ve been speeding up, so I move over and you stop me. So yeah, I am a little irritated. But that didn’t stop you from giving me a ticket.”

TROOPER: “Are you done?”

BLAND: “You asked me what was wrong and I told you. So now I’m done, yeah.”

TROOPER: “OK, OK.”

And that really should’ve been the end of it. He saw that she was irritated, and if he really had been only trying to do his job by enforcing the law by giving her a ticket for not signaling at a turn, it would have been so easy for him to do that. Instead, he saw that she was irritated. She confirmed to him that she was. But rather than doing his job to protect her from her own irritation, he sprinkled pepper on the situation:

(The trooper takes a pause)

TROOPER: “Do you mind putting out your cigarette, please?”

BLAND: “I’m in my car. Why do I have to put out my cigarette?”

TROOPER: “Well, you can step out now.”

BLAND: “I don’t have to step on out.”

TROOPER: “Step out of the car.”

(He opens the driver’s side door.)

BLAND: “No, you don’t have the right.”

TROOPER: “Step out of the car!”

BLAND: “You don’t have the right to do that.”

TROOPER: “I do have the right. Now step out or I’ll remove you.”

BLAND: “I am getting removed for failure to signal?”

But Bland gave more than a signal. She gave him a full billboard with floodlights: “… yeah, I am a little irritated.” 

A ticket and a “have a good day, ma’am” should’ve been the end of it. 

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Titus Kaphar | Fight For Remembrance 68

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I think about Sandra Bland about once a day. She reminds me so much of my mother. Her honesty, her directness, her “beautiful kings and queens” are all my mother’s brand. Her countless encounters with police are shadow twins of my mother’s encounters. Her cigarette lit. Her mood perturbed. 

Once, we lost our mother. Like literally lost her. She had gone on a trip with a friend down South and somehow ended up without clothes in a jail cell up North on the east coast. She couldn’t tell us how she got there or what had happened. It was another four days of her life that she couldn’t remember.  

Sandra Bland’s booking sheet and screening form asked:  

“Have you ever been depressed?” Yes.

“Do you feel this way now?” Yes. 

“Have you ever attempted suicide?” Yes. 

“Why” Lost baby.

“How” Pills. 

My mother: Yes. Yes. Yes. Same. Same. 

Does the screener suspect mental illness? No.

But according to the previously asked questions and her exchange with the officer, Sandra Bland had given signal after signal after signal. 

My mother was picked up by the police somewhere down South at an airport. But unfortunately, I can’t tell you much more than that because I have this ability to make the vivid details of my most traumatic memories disappear. Where down South? In which airport? What year did this happen? I couldn’t tell you. She was naked. Really that’s all that’s necessary for a child to remember: my mother was arrested in her bare skin. At the time, she had a hope chest full of schizophrenic treasures. Any officer could have opened that treasure chest to discover that this wasn’t her first arrest. It wasn’t even her first time being naked when arrested. 

It’s too late for my mother. It’s too late for Sandra Bland – pulled over for not signaling a turn. It’s too late for Jerame Reid – pulled over for running a stop sign; Walter Scott – pulled over because his brake light was out; Samuel DuBose – pulled over for a missing license plate; Philando Castile – pulled over because police said he had a “wide-set nose” resembling a suspect; Daunte Wright – pulled over for an expired registration and an air freshener hanging from his mirror; Patrick Lyoya – pulled over for an improper license plate; Tyre D. Nichols – pulled over for reckless driving.

But it’s not too late for you or me to know that we are humans, not moving violations, not vessels of disorderly conduct or irritations. We are humans who may sometimes make a mistake, fudge the rules, or even break the law. And if that should happen, God forbid that any of us find ourselves face-to-face with a police officer who cannot truly see us as humans who understandably aren’t thrilled to receive their questions or their tickets. 

The next time you’re pulled over, may the officer respect your right to speak or even be clearly emotional. 

Even more, after such an encounter, may this person, sworn to serve and to protect you, give you your ticket, tell you to have a nice day, and send you on your way, back home to your family. May that officer know that you have a right to survive long enough to make it safely home to tell your own story. 

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