Well That Didn't Work

THE INVISIBLE MAN
I went on a police ride-a-long today. My Introduction to Systems of Justice professor has assigned a 7-10 page paper based on a field activity of our choice (which was, in actuality, limited to a police ride-a-long, a jail visit, or a court watch.) I drove around a section of Washington's third district with a cop for four hours; it was pretty interesting. We passed the dorm where Dennis lives, I hate being upset when I think of him; thinking of him was the only thing that always put a smile on my face in the past. But, that's neither here nor there, I'm writing today about something that has given me a bit of perspective.

I decided before arriving at the police station that I was going to write my paper about police discretion (the use of personal discretion each cop exhibits when deciding how to handle a situation.) For example, my officer saw three people using their cell phones while driving and opted not to ticket them. Anyway, one of her calls today was to clear an abandoned house of drug addicts who had taken it over as their own. When we entered the decaying, foul-smelling building, we found one drunk, probably high, man living there. My officer kicked him out, opting not to arrest him for unlawful entry. She then continued to search the house (leaving me waiting in a hallway) and after a short while, I heard her talking to someone.

"Let's go," she said after returning. I looked at her puzzled. "We don't see him, he's not here. He's the invisible man," she said to me.

"Why," I asked. "Why let whoever that is stay when you just kicked another out of the house?"

"You wanna see?" She proceeded to grab my hand and lead me to the room she'd been in. "Knock on the door." I was nervous; I knew the cop wouldn't put me in a situation that posed a risk to my safety, but I didn't know what to expect. The door slowly opened and I found myself face to face with a 73 year old man. He smiled warmly and felt my heart sink.

"This young lady just wanted to meet you," my officer told him. "Thanks." She turned to me, "do you understand now? Look at him, look at the room he lives in and then look at the rest of this dump." I gazed in; it was clean, and I mean spotless. The rest of the house was filled with moldy furniture,trash, and the smell of urine and appeared as though it was about to collapse. This man, however, had cleaned one of the rooms, there was an apartment guide on a table in it next to a bible...the man wasn't an alcoholic or a junkie, he was just "down on his luck." With that, we took our leave.

I don't know what it was about that man...his graying hair, frail figure or warm smile, but my heart just went out to him. I felt that my pain, all the problems and all the stress, were secondary to his. I never told myself that things could be worse; I never denied that fact, but I never thought about it. Things could be so much worse for me than they are. I thought I was the overlooked, the one in pain, the invisible man, but I'm not. I need to change some things about my life...I'm still looking into transferring to GW...
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