Next to Me

 

He said, “being a New York City cop will teach you to believe in God real quick.” Shots had been fired, there was a chase, and he was the one that would have to, “freeze the set,” – go in to the apartment where the three perps were and wait until backup arrived. He crossed the threshold, and the first one was easy. “Freeze, Police!” The guy was on the floor in the living room. His white partner would cuff and subdue him.

A second perp ran into the bedroom, and he followed – gun drawn. But as he burst through the bedroom doorway, it wasn’t perp #2 that bothered him. Perp #2 was on the bed, helpless. It was a tiny motion that he caught out of the corner of his eye, and when he looked, perp #3 lay on the floor near the kitchen hallway, gun raised, and had him cold. “You’re taught in cop school that at that moment you’re dead. But God must have stood in the room next to me that day because that man decided not to shoot, not to kill me. That’s the only reason I’m here today.”

“I don’t know what it was, maybe I reminded him of his uncle or something. He didn’t kill me because of something like that. After we took them down I asked him why he didn’t shoot. Why he didn’t do it. He said, ‘I didn’t want my life to end that way. I knew if I pulled the trigger my life was over and I didn’t want to go down that path.’”

It was a Friday around six p.m. We were in South Beach, Miami standing in front of the Loews Hotel, and had just gotten out of the filmmaker’s workshop. The afternoon light was soft. He was a New York City detective who wanted Black filmmakers to tell more authentic stories. I was learning to understand a God I never believed in, and how maybe I should start.

 

[Miami, FL 2004]