Cruisers in the Left Lane: Police, Resentment, and Death

Traffic on the way to the family dinner was holiday horrible.

Family reunions bring family discussions. This year, a large part of those discussions focused on the police. Everyone had a personal story.

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Heads nodded as the owner of a van explained why he was late. He had to take a circuitous route. Everyone had learned over the years the neighboring town is to be avoided by black drivers of recreational vehicles.

A retired professional woman remembered how her son, years ago, was stopped and roughed up a little by police. They demanded to know where he had stolen the new bicycle he was riding. The officers became convinced it had been a birthday present only after she showed up at the station, a mother’s anger tightly controlled, to claim her son and his new bike.

One family member was not there, stationed as he is away from home. He has seen combat, has been decorated in service to his country. The table seemed a little barren without him. My loved one, his mom, talked about how her son was stopped as a child. He saw some new model automobile and a resident had seen him walking around it. The town was small and a few of the officers knew some of the neighborhood kids. One arrived on the scene as the youngster was questioned. The man intervened and took the kid home. He asked the mother to talk with her son. The youngster needed to be told to be exceptionally careful never to look suspicious on the other side of town, especially around police.

The round of stories continued.

No beatings were related. No physical abuse. Rudeness and disrespect was as far as the experiences extended. As mothers and fathers spoke of their children, as young men told of their own encounters, there was no anger. We could all have been talking about the weather.

Still, pretty much every parent has had similar talks with their children. Police are human. Every human will have bad days. When an armed police officer has a bad day, make sure you don’t. Unfailing courtesy is the operative phrase, with emphasis on unfailing. We must not suffer abuse without complaint. But complaints are always, always, always to held in abeyance until a safe forum is found.

I have complete faith that similar holiday conversations occurred all over the country.

How do we reconcile many thousands of such stories with the deep belief most of us hold that police officers are heroes who are willing to take risks so that the rest of us do not need to be on the line?

I thought about that on the way home. The commute was easier this time. Traffic was lighter and the slowdowns were absent. I remembered an article from the summer.

I don’t read vox.com often enough. I should. Everyone should.

One of the most popular pieces was on traffic. I think most drivers will agree on one major annoyance: those who migrate to the left lane, then slow, forcing the rest of the vehicles on the expressway to work to get around them. They are a constant commuter irritation.

It turns out that more traffic jams may be caused by left-lane-slow-down drivers than is generally recognized. Science now confirms the dark suspicions of the angriest of those who covet the open pavement ahead. A small number of slow drivers creates a wildly disproportionate number of accidents, stops, and delays. The article links to research made possible by new GPS technology,“uncovering previously hidden patterns” in urban traffic.

In most states, there are laws against that slow motion occupation of the passing lane. Only recently has the issue been taken seriously. In the past, those laws have seldom been enforced except as an excuse when no other cause was found. That selective enforcement says something.

As I drove the easier commute, it occurred to me the studies of traffic just might have a parallel in human behavior.

Many of us know from personal experience that there are some police officers we would rather not encounter on the best of days. More of us know this from the experiences of those close to us.

The rest of us have easy access to the video of a fatal choke hold. We can view shots fired at an innocent driver doing his best to comply quickly with shouted orders. Most of us can agree that a twelve year old should be able to play with a toy gun in a public park without deadly consequence. The world isn’t quite right when an adult carries a child’s toy firearm with the intent of purchase but does not survive his shopping experience.

The fatalities are viral, the images indelible. But they do not form the core of minority experience. Most stories told around the reunion table do not include death.

In fact, the raw number of negative experiences is small and the number of officers having bad days is smaller. But the shock waves are disproportionate. Each incident can live for a generation, repeated in holiday gatherings. Every instance of misconduct can find itself amplified as the stories cascade through parents and relatives.

My hope is, my belief is, the overwhelming proportion of police officers are there to protect and serve. We can count on them, and we do. But positive efforts by great police officers can get left behind.

Life’s reality is often dictated by the aggressive few. It doesn’t take many officers who are attracted to law enforcement for the wrong reasons to generate a cascading effect. Each incident of minor violation, each show of disrespect, every story that resonates in the retelling, alters more than a single instant. The momentary degradation, the small injustice, extend beyond the moment.

The perceptions are not unfounded. The amplifications are not unwarranted exaggeration. They involve more than resentment. They are a collective warning signal, a community caution sign. The target is most often the young, the black, the poor. And the parent-to-youth conversations continue in the interest of survival: the talk lives on because it must.

I thought about this on the drive home. The traffic was easier than it had been. But it will only take a few to block and obstruct, refusing to get out of the way. The flow can be disrupted.

And the commute through life can become very hard.

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