He Wants to Hold My Hand

I was walking through San Pedro Sunday, looking around for column ideas, when a patrol car pulled to the curb and the cop inside gestured for me to stop. I began running like hell.

It was instinct. When you are a person of minority persuasion and a cop beckons, you do what comes naturally. Not that I had committed a crime. It was just that I didn’t look right.

Patrolmen rarely hassle dressed-up Mexicans on their way to church, but I was wearing old jeans and a sweat shirt and looked like I’d been sleeping under a pier. And there wasn’t a church in sight.

Years ago when I lived in east Oakland, no cop ever would have caught me, but I am not good at running anymore. Within a block and a half the guy had me cornered.

I was gasping for breath when he got out of his car and headed toward me, but I still managed to holler, “Don’t hit me! I’m a priest!”

I sure as hell wasn’t going to holler, “Don’t hit me! I’m a journalist!” That’s a ticket to cemetery city. I used to say, “Don’t hit me, I’m a doctor,” but I read one day where a Latino gynecologist was worked over by two cops and a dog, so I gave that up.

But this policeman, a big blond guy with hard blue eyes, seemed strangely friendly. In fact he was smiling.

“C’mere, li’l amigo,” he said, arms outstretched.

My God, not the chokehold!

Then he put his arms around me and it suddenly struck me. The fool was hugging me.

“Hey,” he said, finally holding me at arm’s length, “wanna go bowling?”

It wasn’t until after I got him to stop hugging me and managed to assure him I didn’t want to bowl, play catch or join him in a chocolate shake that I realized why he was doing all that.

He was trying to form a new relationship with a minority resident under the LAPD community-based policing plan, which began that very day in five of the city’s 18 police divisions. San Pedro was one of them.

I said, “Excuse me, officer,” and pushed him gently away. “I understand what you’re doing, but I think you’ve misinterpreted the part about forming new community relations.” I explained in simple declarative sentences that new community relations meant eliminating old community practices, especially in areas with high minority populations.

It was a recommendation of the Christopher Commission after the beating of Rodney King, which represented an old community relationship.

“For instance,” I said, “when you see a Mexican running, it does not necessarily mean he has (A) robbed a liquor store, (B) killed the kid next door or (C) raped his teacher. Maybe he’s just late for school.”

“Sounds good to me,” the cop said, reaching out again.

“Wait,” I said, “don’t hug me. Let me finish. The new plan simply asks you to follow a variation of the golden rule: Do not do unto others anything that is going to cause pain or bleeding.”

“Look what I’ve got,” he said suddenly, reaching into his patrol car.

Here it comes, I thought, the old nightstick! But instead he brought out a Mickey Mouse puppet and said in a falsetto voice, “Hi, li’l amigo, wanna play?”

I related my strange story at a dinner party that same night and was amazed to hear of similar experiences in other pilot precincts.

“A policeman insisted on shopping for me,” a black woman said. “He followed me into the store and pushed my cart. Then he wouldn’t let me buy anything but ‘healthy’ foods like oat bran and nonfat milk. When I picked up a six-pack, he knelt right there in the middle of an aisle and asked me to pray with him.”

“That’s nothing,” a Mexican man said. “A cop knocked on my door, handed me a little boy and said he was playing in the street. I said, ‘Wait a minute, that’s not my kid.’ He said, ‘Take him anyhow, you’ll make a fine father. I’ll start adoption proceedings.’ ”

“A policeman stopped traffic and carried me across a busy street,” an elderly Asian lady said. Tears came to her eyes. “I didn’t want to cross the street. When he left, I tried crossing back and was almost killed by a gangbanger swilling gin from a chocolate shake container.”

“The next thing you know,” the black woman said, “they’re going to want to marry our sisters.”

We all agreed to write letters to Chief Daryl Gates urging him to explain to his men it is not necessary to overdo minority-love. Simply not beating us would be adequate.

Then that night when I left the party, which was in an area where old community relationships are still practiced, a patrol car rolled up and a cop yelled, “Stay outta trouble, chili pepper.”

There now, I said to myself, that’s more like it.