I’m more surprised that the police officer doesn’t know this.
“It’s just a rule that an organization enforces with punishment. It’s not law. You can’t put me in prison for standing beside these two men. You are a police officer, not a Whistleblower. Your job is to work with communities to protect and serve.”
“Yeah, protecting us from you,” a man shouts out from the crowd.
“No,” I disagree. “Your job is to protect and serve me,” I say to the policeman. “I am a part of this community.”
“I won’t serve you, Flawed,” he snarls, like I’m diseased.
He is a police officer—a member of a force I once trusted, admired, felt protected by. I think of the people who have hissed at me on my walk here today, the children who have been pulled out of my path. I think of the lack of eye contact. The anger rises. Nothing makes sense.
I am a girl of definitions, of logic, of black and white.
“HARP!” I shout at the police officer, feeling the anger fully within me now. I learned this at school. I learned all this. Why doesn’t he know these basic principles that I was taught, that he was surely taught, too? Why doesn’t anybody in the real world do what we’re taught? “H is for honesty,” I say, hearing the tremble in my voice, not from fear but from anger. I try to control it. “Being honest and ethical and adhering to the principles of fairness and justice. That’s what a police officer must do. A is for accountability. Accepting individual responsibility and ensuring public accountability.”
There is a rumble in the crowd. I continue, not moving my eyes from his.
“R is for respect! Having respect for people, their human rights and their needs.”
Members of the crowd start to mumble in agreement. The police officer steps closer to me. He lifts his receiver to his mouth and calls for backup.
“Watch it now,” the man to my left says quietly.
The police officer is standing right before me now with a sneer on his face.
“Let them go,” somebody calls from the crowd.
“Yeah, they’re not doing any harm. They’re just shopping.”
People begin calling out their opinions, which I see panics him some more. Beads of sweat break out on his forehead. He is beginning to lose control. He is badly outnumbered.
“She’s the girl from the TV, the famous one,” someone calls out. “You can’t arrest her.”
“The girl who has five brands.”
The police officer narrows his eyes as they wander over me, and it registers with him who I am. He looks afraid of me.
“She’s the most Flawed of all,” someone else shouts, and others call for him to shut up. The people in the crowd are beginning to argue among themselves.
The police officer lifts the baton from his hip belt.
“Whoa, now,” the man to my right says. “What are you going to do with that?”
“You keep quiet,” he says, sweat on his upper lip now.
“She’s just a child,” a woman calls out. “For the love of God, would you all leave her alone.”
Her desperate cry introduces a whole new wave of emotion.
“And you”—he looks at me menacingly—“need to keep your mouth shut. Understand?”
I take a deep breath. I’m not finished. It would be logical to at least finish what I was saying before the inevitable happens. Granddad will know something has happened if I’m not back outside in three minutes. He will know to start the engine and get out of here. Whatever he did in the past will give him that gut instinct.
“Professionalism,” I say, finally, gently, just to the police officer. “Providing a professional policing service to all communities.”
He looks over my shoulder, and I twist my body around to see what he’s looking at, but there’s nothing behind me. By the time I realize he was trying to trick me, he brings the baton down and hits me across the back of my legs. I crumple and go down. The antiseptic bottle smashes as it hits the ground.
It’s almost as if there is a second when everybody takes a moment to make a decision, to pick a side, to figure out who it is one really is. And then the riot begins.