My Experience Getting Arrested

**The following was copied from the author's Facebook stream with permission.**

Hi there, I just wanted to post my experience of getting arrested [several weeks ago] at the protests in Philly. I’m making this post on Facebook as I’ve been seeing very little correct information about the protests / police being circulated here. I also wanted to post this because I have friends and family on here who do not agree with me with how the protests are being conducted, and are sympathetic to the police. Obviously getting arrested is not something that should be fetishized and should not be the goal of attending a protest, but I wanted to share my personal experience with the police in hopes to show that there is no such thing as a Good Cop.

First off would like to make clear I’m not Black and so my experience with the police and getting arrested is vastly different from a Black person’s. Also I was arrested amongst 40+ other people and a fair amount of people had been arrested earlier in the day so that cushioned my treatment in that they just wanted us out. I also was technically arrested for disobeying curfew, I don’t know how I would have been treated if for a different reason of arrest.

With regard to the idea of ACAB (All Cops Are B*stards):

I was technically arrested for being outside past the 6pm curfew. After 6pm, we had straggled behind the main protest. There were pockets of people around the block following a few people from the protest earlier in the day.

I saw a group of people begin to run towards something around the corner. When I followed, I saw a group of cops grabbing a man off of his bike, jostling him around, trying to arrest him. Upon seeing people coming, more police came to form a human wall--keeping us from reaching the cyclist. The man was thrashing while five police officers handled him. It was clear that he couldn’t run away as he was surrounded, but seeing the violent ways in which police were treating protesters (tear gassing arrested civilians, firing with rubber bullets) his panic made perfect sense. My two friends began recording the police attacking the man, not the police creating a human wall, but the police on the human wall began to threaten us, then whipped out batons to get us to leave. We asked the police on the wall why they were detaining that man, the officers’ badge numbers, etc. which they all refused to answer. Finally fed up, they grabbed us and arrested us.

The cops inside the wall threatened us with physical violence just for recording and for questioning them. The cops making up the wall were looking straight forward. People were screaming, begging them to turn around, to help. Their blank, uncaring stares felt alarmingly inhumane as civilians were getting hurt around them.

We were brought onto a bus and none of the cops would answer where we were going to or why we were being detained. This was in part out of disregard for us, but also in part due to lack of experience. It was obvious that for some of these officers it was their first arrests of their first days on the job, as many of them needed instruction from their superior on how to take down our names, how to zip-tie us, etc. They also neglected to read us our miranda rights. This is not to say that them being new or having little experience is what made them bad at their jobs--police training doesn’t save lives--as there are plenty of measures that police departments have taken to prevent officers from murdering Black people and yet it keeps happening. The only way to protect people from the Police is to Abolish the Police. However, their inexperience and naivety added to the confusion and mistreatment that defined the encounter.

We were separated into a female bus and a male bus, then brought to a nearby precinct. While the ride itself was under thirty minutes, once we arrived at the precinct we were transferred to another bus and we sat in the parking lot for several hours.

Three hours in, they began paperwork and in groups of four took us inside to remove our zipties, finish up paperwork, and take our photos. Because I was out of state, the FBI interviewed me as they were concerned I was an “outside agitator”. I was the last group to be taken off of my bus and got out of the station at 10:30pm, I had been arrested at 6:20pm.

[As a side note, I am so thankful to the protestors who were waiting outside of the precinct. They had water bottles, sandwiches, HAND SANITZER(!!), and were offering rides home for protestors who were let out.]

Again, I am writing this post because I have people on here who disagree with ACAB (All Cops Are B*stards), believing in a concept of a Good Cop, and disagree with the way that protestors have been talking about cops, and I’d like to share my experiences with these “Good Cops”.

Throughout the four hours we requested water or the ability to use the bathroom, but the police officers, when they would respond to us, told us that the water was inside of the building. We asked officers to bring out water to us and they said that we would have to wait until we were brought inside, but gave no time-line on that.

Two girls were forced to pee on the floor of the bus as the cops refused to escort them to a bathroom inside.

One of the people on my bus began having an asthma attack. Thankfully my friend who was arrested alongside me had an inhaler with her, but all of our hands were ziptied behind our backs. We yelled for the cop guarding us to bring her out, to help her, and when he refused, we screamed for help out through the windows. Thankfully due to the incompetence of the arresting officers, a few of the people on my bus were able to slip through their zip ties, as some were not tied correctly, and helped administer the inhaler to the person having the attack, who at this point was throwing up. Finally, minutes later they were brought off of the bus and taken away to a hospital.

About 3 hours in, as they began to start our paperwork process, one of the protestors was talking back to one of the “nicer” officers on the bus. This officer was a woman who had previously been calm and technically “nice” to us. At this point, she got frustrated and told the protestor that now she would be left on the bus and kept overnight (Thankfully, the protestor fainted later in the night and was brought off of the bus). This was a “nicer” cop and yet when she was pushed, she abused her power to treat a protestor with more punishment than necessary.

I would also like to state that none of the officers were wearing a mask. They had masks, and we continued to ask the officiers to put their masks on, but they ignored our requests. All of the protestors were wearing masks.

When I left the station, I had to walk through a group of ~twenty cops in two lines hanging out outside. As I passed them, a cop shouted after me “Have a nice night, SIR”, and burst into laughter. Later, I heard that my friend, another butch lesbian who had been let out twenty minutes earlier, had also been intentionally misgendered: a cop shouted after my friend “Goodnight, SIR” as he and another cop burst into laughter. Both times, twenty cops heard one of theirs homophobically harassing us, and both times did nothing to check them. Even the cops who aren’t actively harassing were still condoning this and therefore not protecting their citizens.

Those four hours in custody I encountered vicious cops and “nice” cops, and yet all of them were bad in that they protected each other and left us citizens vulnerable.

Another reason I wanted to make this post is because of the media coming out of Philly at the moment.

The bus we were transferred onto had two people from USA Today. They both had their press passes on them, obviously reporters and yet were also arrested earlier in the day. The police arresting people who are reporting on the protests shows that the news coming out of Philly at the moment is incredibly biased and limited.

This morning I was seeing reports of ATMs being bombed by looters. At the precinct last night I was hearing booming sounds and the cops were not doing anything. This is because this was not protestors being violent and looting as is the narrative but rather the police were behind these explosions. Throughout the night, the police were going through the city with trucks with LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) to create sounds of an explosion throughout the night. These were not done by protestors and yet this is being put on protestors.

Lastly, I wanted to say a few tips. Again, I was there because of breaking curfew, and I am not Black, and was arrested with 40+ other people, so my experience may not mirror yours if you get arrested but:

-Bring a small backpack to the protest with water in case you get arrested. They did not take away small backpacks (after checking through them) and if you have water, it is a lifesaver. If you or another person on the bus can get your arms out of your zip ties, you can have water.

-Open the windows. Again, this is easiest if you can get your hands out of your zipties because there’s a latch on the side but this can also be a coordinated effort with another person. Ventilation is SO IMPORTANT due to COVID right now, so make sure to open all of the windows, especially when the police may refuse to wear their masks when talking to you.

-Be careful if you bring a bike to the protest. A number of people on the bus were tackled off of their bikes by cops. Who then left the bikes in the street (Obviously this is harder to control though).

-VERY IMPORTANT: Know what you have to tell them and know what you don’t have to. When the cops began the paperwork on the bus, they started at the front. Thankfully I was in the back of the bus and so protesters in the middle had overheard the questions being asked and had told us that some of the questions being asked we did not have to answer, such as their questions about tattoos, our social security numbers, and who we lived with (asking for their full names as well). Give the cops as little information as possible. Also, if you get talked to by the FBI you don’t have to give them your phone number and in fact I encourage you again to not give them anything. You don’t know how this will be used against you in the future.

That was my experience with the police. Obviously being arrested is a risk and is scary, but as non-Black people we need to use our bodies to shield Black people from police violence. I wanted to post this for people who are concerned about protesting or unsure about the Anti-Police sentiments behind the protests at the moment (obviously there are other reasons to not protest outside such as concerns around COVID and exposing family / disability safety). If you’re a non Black person not protesting because you disagree with some of the messaging or are afraid of being arrested as it would affect your future, you have to protest, as some people can't choose to protest or not as the police force targets them for being Black.