Wednesday, May 27, 2020
After I realized my forestry career was over, I lived in Oakland, CA, for a short time, across the street from Highland Hospital. I remembered hearing back then that, generally, this wasn’t a very safe neighborhood. And that was without the proximity to Highland Hospital generally. Specifically, my apartment was just across the street from what is currently labeled Highland Emergency Medicine on Fourteenth Avenue.
I think my apartment building was just down the street on the left. Image from Google Maps Street view, added Jan. 24, 2026.
I remember that my apartment complex offered me off-street parking. Still, I never used it because I felt less safe back in that secluded parking area than I did out in the relatively open city streets, even if my parking space was adjacent to a long expanse of Highland Hospital very close to the emergency entrance that was used for the most part for people injured in fights, drug overdoses, crimes of all description, or during encounters of some kind with the Oakland Police. For all of the activity of that kind that must have gone on, I was only rarely aware of it.
One otherwise normal morning, I crossed the street to my truck to start the drive to work. I got in and noticed my glove box was open, with some of its contents on the truck’s floor. The only thing I could tell was missing was a pair of prescription sunglasses. It wasn’t that much of a shock, considering the neighborhood, but it did put me on a bit more alert. There had been no sign of forced entry, so I assumed I must have inadvertently left the passenger side door unlocked. I started going down to inspect my truck at random times when I was home.
During one of those spot inspections, I had just checked the passenger-side door lock. It was secure. Before I could turn and cross back to my apartment building, I heard the heavy impacts of boots running towards me, and the yells of, “Freeze and get your hands up where we can see them!!!”
I was happy to oblige. Two officers were running towards me, both with guns drawn. I remained frozen until they got to me to explain what they thought I had done that would warrant such a dramatic entry on their part.
Hands still up and where they could see them, they demanded to know who I was and why I was trying to open the door to the truck we were still standing close to.
I told them my name and that the truck in question was mine. I explained, “I have noticed of late that the neighborhood is not particularly safe, and my truck has been broken into before. I was just checking to make sure I had locked it up before I went to bed.”
“Do you have your ID?”
They had calmed down a bit, but I still had my hands up. However relaxed they seemed, they had not told me I could lower my hands yet.
I told them, “My wallet is not in my back pocket. I carry it in my front left pocket. Is it OK that I reach into this pocket (I pointed) to get my wallet out?”
They said that would be OK, but even though I had told them my wallet was in my front pocket instead of the more common back pocket, I still kept my movements slow and deliberate. Their guns were no longer out, but they still had them. And I was also aware of how much bigger physically, each of them was compared to me. If they turned on me, it wouldn’t be much of a struggle.
Once they verified that my story matched the vehicle ownership and my address matched where I told them I lived, they told me the “why” of their stopping me.
There had been a “walk-away” of a person they had in custody and had brought to the hospital to have a medical exam. And, I looked just like him.
I looked just like him, and I guess, from a distance at night, with adrenaline pumping in both of them once they had seen me trying the doors on the truck, it probably shaded their interpretation of the event they thought they were seeing.
This happened forty years ago, and it sticks with me to this day.
And every time I hear of a person of color who has lost his or her life in the act of being apprehended by the police, I think back to this event, and how I instinctively acted when two cops ran up to me with guns drawn, yelling for me to freeze and keep my hands in sight.
I was lucky that night because I stayed calm. I was lucky I had my ID on me.
But since then, I have always wondered.
Had I been a person of color, would I have reacted the same way, having two cops run up on me with guns drawn? Or would I have learned by then that people of color are assumed guilty even if they are in the right?
Had I been a person of color, would they have acted the same way towards me?
I think the outcome would have been different.
I remember seeing them running to me with guns drawn, and at no time did I have a thought that I was in danger. I think I was lucky that night that I was white.
Memory is the Key 