September12009
August272009
Ironically, it was the third “Peaches” with whom Herb sang this song.
August262009
The Arrest of Danielle Bell
by: Danielle M. Bell
I like my name in its entirety.
I like saying it. Other people like it as well. Danielle Bell. It rhymes. It is especially endearing when chimed in my Southern accent, or so I’ve been told. However, on one particular balmy Louisville evening, it was not a good time to have my name. It was my last night in town and I was craving derby pie. I rode shotgun in a raggedy pick up truck with peeling white paint with my friend. Nathan. He owns a vintage clothing store and has Nordic bone structure and a Bonnie Prince Billy beard. On the way to the restaurant we drove too far down and had to turn into the entrance of a very wealthy (read: very white) neighborhood to get back on track. Just then we heard a police siren coming from an unmarked SUV, signaling for us to pull over. Before the arresting officer made it to Nathan’s car, two more unmarked SUVs and a police car joined them.
I no longer remember the cops’ faces. They were a blur of the Irish-Scot ancestry you often find in uniform; thoroughly unremarkable characters with good ol’ boy diction and high school diplomas. I do remember that one wore a CBGB tee-shirt, clearly not his usual dress, but perhaps he was going undercover as “punk” in order to blend in with the rabble rousers on Louisville’s illustrative Bardstown Road. He looked ridiculous.
Their first question was addressed to Nathan, “How do you know this woman?”
Nathan explained that he owned a store nearby and that I shopped there, that we were friends. Registration was up to date, the vehicle was searched and they found nothing, Nathan handed over his license and I my college and military ids (my father is in the National Guard). We both thought that should be that. The cops made small talk as our names were ran through the computer.
I was asked if I’d lived at a number of addresses I’d never lived in and gave them my parents’ respective addresses, I also explained I’d been in New York for the past six years and that the address on my college id was where I’d live the longest. Needless to say, this was taking much longer than we would have liked. I was annoyed, hungry and sweating. I wanted them to hand me back my identification so I could get my damn slice of pie, a la mode! Try to imagine my shock then when I was told to step out of the vehicle.
The second both my feet hit the ground I was slapped into handcuffs, tightly. I demanded to know what this was all about.
“That will be explained to you at the jail.”
I was incredulous. I channeled the spirit of my grandmother, a civil rights activist and local celebrity, the kind of person a black calls when they get their ass kicked by the cops or when a Country Club refuses to admit them. This is a woman who once told a cop, “a cracker,” (her words) that his mother should have swallowed him. I demanded their badge numbers and told them that I was no fool, that the reason we had been pulled over in the first place is because I am black and he is white and we were riding in his car at night. (It is often whispered in the South that when a white man is seen with a black woman it is because she is a whore, or, at best, his concubine.) I, in turn, was told I was playing the race card, that elusive little game changer that no actual black person can ever seem to get his or her hands on. “I ain’t racist,” CBGB OMFUG went on. “My wife is black, so don’t try that with me.” I gave them my grandmother’s name and told them to expect a march of some kind very soon. Ahhh, the protest march, not really enough to send a chill up their spins. But all I had, nonetheless.
“I know exactly who your grandmother is, “ said one of them with a smirk.
I lost a good deal of my spunk once actually in the cop car. The air was thin; it became clear that I was headed to jail. For what, I didn’t know. For his part, Nathan got off easily, unless you count the added weight to his (already considerable) load of white guilt. They did say he failed to signal—he is adamant that he did not. He drove to my father’s house to inform him at midnight I had been arrested. I was later told he was in such a state that my family felt as sorry for him as they did for me. He was one of the good ones.
Watching Nathan pull off I was filled with fear and grief. Should something be done to me, there would be no one to witness it. My father’s aunt, it is worth mentioning, was first black female to be admitted into the Kentucky Bar and the state’s first female prosecutor. One of more glamorous feats is having been Mohammad Ali’s first attorney, but her lasting legacy will be her fight for civil and black voter registration. Long story short, in 1965 her body was found in the Ohio River. My great grandmother and others in the community believe it was the work of the Louisville Police Department, though officially the case remains unsolved. No wonder then that while I waited for the cops to return to the car I tried to slip out of the handcuffs, or that I would let out a series of screams that no one would hear.
When the two gentlemen did return to the car, they refused to tell me what it was I was accused of. I stopped asking and kept an eye on the road. Somewhat assured to know we were indeed heading in the right direction. And to jail I went.
The man who took my mug shot photo and finger printed me was notably amiable. He told me to say cheese and had trouble working the camera. I found his cheery demeanor off-putting and foreign in such an environment, far more appropriate for the Olan Mills than the county jailhouse. In fact, I think it was he who was kind enough to tell me what I was in there for.
The warrant for my arrest stated that I had attacked another young woman. My last fight had been in the sixth grade with a boy, I did in fact win the fight, but this was something else.
I made my one phone call to my grandmother, because I couldn’t remember anyone else’s number. I hated that I would be waking a 71-year-old woman in the middle of the night, but she was used to such things. She pledged to get me out of there. I was taken to my cell, which was referred by the authorities as a dorm. Dorm, at least for me, brings to mind college; cell, however, has street cred.
It was a windowless cement room. The floors felt as though they were carved from ice. No less than fifteen women were splayed out on the ground. There weren’t enough cots and blankets for all of us. I feared the blankets that were there would give me fleas, Luckily they were all taken and I was allowed to freeze until someone took pity on me and loaned me a jacket several hours into my stay. I had given her my lunch of rubbery beef, stale white bread, and a mushy combination of peas, carrots, and green beans. For dessert: two lemon cream cookies, all served at the improbable hour of 10:30am, only two hours after an equally disgusting breakfast. Funny, once released I spoke to my fourteen year old sister on the telephone, she said she had been very scared for me and when taken from her bed at 1am to accompany my father downtown. She asked the guard if I would be sexually abused by the other inmates. He told her it was doubtful. I laughed and told her that it is not the prisoners one should be fearful of.
On the day Avon Barksdale begins his several year bid Stringer Bell (that surname again) says to him, “Remember there are only two days: the day you go in the that bitch—“
“And the day you get out,” they say in unison.
Indeed, that too is how I conceptualized time behind bars. I figured I would lie low, bide my time. I would then sue the pants off the LPD, maybe even the city of Louisville. I hoped mostly I would be out in time to catch my flight, return to Brooklyn and attend a friend’s party. But it was hard to be invisible in the jail, in large part on account of my candy pink Agent Provocateur peep toes. They became the inspiration behind my prison handle: High Heels.
My fellow inmates liked my shoes and they liked me. They even believed my incredible tale of mistaken identity, which was refreshing. And, before I could even opine, a young white lady said to me, “And you know what that was all about to begin with.” We all nodded.
Others shared their tales —from what I can tell, all the same shit. Bored cops arresting women who, for whatever reason, looked suspicious, or maybe just poor. I was struck most by a woman for whom the police had initially been called on a domestic violence dispute. She was a very gentle woman with the most bruised and battered arms and legs. Rather than take her to a woman’s shelter or a hospital, they ran her name through the computer and found a warrant, and sent her and her plum colored limbs downtown.
At around 6 am (I can’t be sure because there were no clocks) I was informed I had a visit from my lawyer, who was really just my dad. Reviewing the warrant he found that my namesake was 5’6 (i.e. considerably taller than me even in my now famous heels). Though, interestingly, in the cops’ report I, myself, am listed as that height. Danielle Bell, along with a crony, beat the shit out of one Shantika Mudd. In front of her kids, no less. Not really something I would do. I was also told Nathan’s official citation was for a missing rear view mirror, not failure to signal. He promised he would get me out of there as soon as possible and left.
On my way back to the dorm, other inmates in a different cell saw my shoes through a window in the door and gestured to them with smiles. I sat in a corner and tried to sleep.
In total I only spent twelve hours in detention, which is eight more than Henry Louis Gates. And, like him, have since had all charges dropped and my record expunged. My release, however, was just a zany as my actual arrest.
Realizing the extent of my grandmother’s and father’s connections (not much, really), moments before my official release, I was taken to a room (alone and without counsel although they knew my father/attorney was outside the jail waiting to see me) to meet with the legal advisor to Louisville Police Department, the deputy of corrections, and Shantika Mudd’s caseworker. They were all very apologetic, effusive and insincere in the way Southern people often are. They apologized for having inconvenienced me. I asked if they were also sorry that I had been racially profiled. No, they explained, this was a matter of mistaken identity, a mix up. They were adamant that racial profiling did not happen in Jefferson County.
My ass.
They escorted me outside, apologized to my father, mother, and grandmother. This was their way of making nice. My dad told them that that was all fine and good but we’d also file a complaint to internal affairs. With a twinkle in his eye he wondered
aloud, “Who would mistake this little girl for 5’6?” In an hour and a half we were to go to court, where Shantika Mudd would testify in front of the judge that I was not her Danielle Bell.
I recognized Shantika’s face from somewhere. Turned out she went to my high school and graduated the same year as me, 2000. She was a quiet girl, I think. By then she had three kids, smooth skin, hazel eyes, and crimson hair. She was incredibly apologetic. I thanked her for leaving work to testify on my behalf. “They did me real dirty,” she said of her attackers. They beat her head into the concrete, pulled out chunks of her hair, some beef over some boy. Her mother, a solid bodied blonde woman with weathered skin and an arm tattoo, was also there. She wore a sleeveless denim shirt and matching shorts, one of those South Louisville types you do not want to fuck with. She told me she came in case I really was Danielle Bell.
(It was in the courtroom we found that not only did they have a photo of Danielle Bell on file, but also that she’d been arrested in recent months and still not served her warrant. We looked nothing alike.)
The lawsuit I’d planned never happened, the lawyer said that while I was clearly the victim of racial profiling it would be hard to prove it, along with malicious intent. Moreover, this was the same county, like so many others, that had acquitted white cops accused of murdering innocent, unarmed black men. It would best to simply move on. Easy enough, really. I’d always understood cops to be assholes.
From the experience I did learn a few things: what it feels to be resolutely powerless and held hostage by the state, to say I am Orthodox Jewish in order to get a decent meal, and to always wear pretty shoes.
