Looking Backward from the Tricentennial

Chapter Thirty-Five (part 2)

Julian inhaled, preparing to speak. Stella's face after learning about his incarceration displayed raw curiosity, not any judgement. "Do you know what a pretext stop is?" he asked.

Ray shook his head, but Stella answered. "Before there were self-driving cars, it was a traffic stop based on racial profiling."

"Exactly like the slave patrols the police came from," Julian said bitterly. "White guys on power trips."

Stella hesitated before interjecting. "No, professional police forces were a response to the industrial revolution and people flooding into cities. London started theirs in 1829; Boston and New York followed a few years later." Julian stared at her; she stared back. "Egypt had a police force more than five thousand years ago," she insisted.

"Anyway," Julian continued, "I wasn't going any faster than the rest of the traffic, but I was pulled over on my way home from the grocery store. It was three years after George Floyd was murdered, Stella, and despite all the protests about racial bias in policing, it continued to happen. The officer was a white woman, and I wasn't very polite or respectful about giving her my license and information. She asked me to step out of the vehicle and open the trunk."

"Didn't you have to consent to a search?" Stella asked.

"I didn't consent; I told her no. What I had in the trunk was two pints of melting ice cream among a week's worth of groceries, but it was none of her business. She told me refusing made her suspicious, and two more police cars pulled up, lights flashing, while she pressured me to reveal whatever I was hiding.

"I absolutely refused, and I guess I took a step toward her. Then another cop was pointing his gun at me, telling me to put my hands on the trunk; I'm under arrest." He shook his head ruefully.

"They pulled a gun on you?" Ray asked skeptically.

"The police shot and killed a thousand people a year back then," Stella told him.

Julian let out a bitter laugh. "I was terrified of being the next one; I cooperated and quit arguing. They charged me with aggravated assault for—and I made my public defender give me the law—attempting by physical menace to put an officer, while in the performance of duty, in fear of imminent serious bodily injury. Second degree felony, not to mention the other charges of resisting arrest and anything else they could throw at me."

Julian stared straight ahead as he continued narrating his story. "They wanted twenty-five thousand cash bail. When they told me that, I thought I was going to lose my mind. I didn't have that kind of money, and I couldn't imagine how I was going to get out of there. They offered to drop the other charges and recommend a two-year sentence if I pled guilty. I didn't want to risk waiting for a trial just to get ten years, so I took the deal."

Ray furrowed his brow. "But you didn't actually assault the officer, did you?"

"You think the prosecutor would have a hard time convincing a jury that a little white policewoman was afraid of an uncooperative black man?" Julian scoffed. "Ten years, Ray; ten years if that happened. I took the deal. What was supposed to be a simple trip to the store took fifteen months and turned my life upside down."

"I'm sorry that happened, Julian," Stella said, although she was smiling. "Your story is a fascinating collection of unjust anachronisms like cash bail, which mainly functioned as a way to pressure plea deals from those who couldn't afford to pay. It's exceedingly unlikely that a similar thing could happen now.

"An arrest today spurs the intervention of a restoration advisor. They listen to both parties and try to mediate a satisfactory resolution. More often than not, that's the end of any criminal case, although a prosecutor has to sign off on the deal. If they want to press ahead, a plea bargain that includes incarceration is capped at four years. For someone to receive a sentence longer than that, a jury has to convict them."