Good Samaritanism backfires…badly.
I live in a new gilded age in a golden city. But sometimes the cracks show, even here. The façade crumbles and you find yourself naked, in solitary confinement, in a wretched, feces-stained prison.
How? As a result of my efforts to help injured bicyclists by calling 911, I was, in short order: separated from my friend, violently tackled, arrested, taken to county jail, stripped and left in a solitary cell. I am writing this story because, if it could happen to me, it could happen to you, and I feel the need to do something to help prevent this brutality from propagating.
The author, Peretz Partensky, is an emigre from Siberia, a small business owner in the San Fransisco bay area and a scientist with a Ph.D in Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics. What happens to him as he is walking home from drinks with a friend is simply unbelievable, inexplicable and deeply, deeply disturbing. The advice he gets from friends afterwards…to simply accept that contact with police even when calling for medical help will sometimes earn you a beating, time in the county lock-up and even being stripped and put in psych eval as a punishment for demanding medical help…and you just need to treat it like an act of God that cannot be helped is even worse.
I have called 911 at the site of an accident before as a good Samaritan. The police were gracious, calm, professional and went out of their way to thank me for doing my civic duty. Every other police contact I have had in Greensboro has been the same. Accepting bad behavior from bad cops is an insult to police who do not mistreat the public…and that is why I write about bad cops. We do not have to accept them.
