6-year Girl Arrested

6-YEAR OLD GIRL ARRESTED

BY SAN JACINTO P.D. FOR

SITTING UNDER SHADE

OF TREE IN 120° F DAY

San Jacinto, California June 30,2013. My niece Irina was arrested for loitering under a willow tree in front of a high wall surrounding a "high class" community. 

My niece wanted to eat a burger at the jack-in-the-box. I live in the Ukraine and you can’t drive a car from eastern Europe to California. When I try to visit my family in California, I arrive without a car. There are no buses in San Jacinto. I have walked for hours looking for a bus stop and I’ve asked many people. THERE ARE NO BUSES!!! Everybody drives expensive new cars or fancy R.V. trucks. They have never seen a man walking on a sidewalk (pavement) with a little girl. Such a sight in some parts of California, is as unusual as an alien “star ship” from “Klingon” landing in the middle of a hill-billy village.

It was 120°F. Irina wanted to rest under the shade of a tree. I was thinking about the infamous “loitering” laws that have infected the U.S. “NO” I firmly insisted, “the Jack-in-the-Box is not far away. They have air conditioning. You can rest there.”

Then she looked at me with those sad glossy lost-puppy-dog eyes and pleaded, "Pleeease, uncle, I’m getting dizzy"

Oh-oh, I was thinking about all those French people who died in the heat wave of 2007. "Okay! Okay! okay! sit down under this tree,” I said as I took a bottle of water from my backpack .

The U.S is the only country in the world that has loitering laws. The U.S. loitering laws were made by white people who were terrified of black people. Whenever a black man would stand in front of the home of a white family to wait for a bus, meet a friend, a date, or a taxi, the white family would tremble, pee in their pants in uncontrollable panic. The enforcement of U.S loitering laws are 100% contingent to the whims or caprices of the police.  In all my life, I have never seen nor heard of a white main getting arrested for loitering, PERIOD.

A black man getting arrested for loitering is as normal as a sunny day in California.

After the short shade break, Irina said she was feeling better. So we got up and continued to walk towards the Jack-in-the-Box. Ten minutes later, a police car stopped suddenly beside us and the cops ran out. They told me to stop. Then a police-woman ran towards Irina; grabbed her; and took her into a police car. Then the male cop grabbed me by my arms and handcuffed me. Much later, Irina told me that the policewoman had handcuffed her in the police car and the cuffs were very tight and painful. The male cop made me sit on the sidewalk and began to ask me questions.  I knew that they wanted me to make another false confession but I didn’t know what lie they wanted me to tell.  I suspected that they wanted me to confess to kidnapping Irina. But that was not the true reason why they arrested me.

Much later, Irina’s mom told me what happened. There was a neighbor who saw us sitting under the willow tree during the shade break. He (or she) had called the police and asked them to arrest us for loitering under the tree. But I didn’t know the true reason for the arrest. I didn’t know that they wanted me to testify against her by saying that I saw her loitering in front of walled community. I didn’t know that they wanted me to confess to conspiracy to loitering under a willow tree. Two more police cars arrived and so there were a total of 4 police officers. Two cops held me in one police car and the other 2 cops held Irina hand-cuffed in the other police car. They held us in custody for at least an hour. The law gives me the right to refuse to testify against Irina or against myself. This is why I refused to answer their questions. Irina is just 6 years old. Why should they force me to testify against her? An hour later Irena’s mom arrived by car. Perhaps it’s because Astrid is blond with blue eyes. Either way she convinced them (or threatened them) to drop the charges against us. As Irina walked to Astrid’s car, Irina was crying loudly. Her face was wet with tears. Her eyes were red from crying for an hour in a police car without airconditioning. Her eyes were bulging out so much that it looked as if they would explode. As she cried, the 4 cops were laughing so loudly that it was more of a loud roar than a laugh.

Okay, okay, I know that it’s normal in the U.S to get arrested just for walking on a public sidewalk. I have been arrested for standing in front of the Temecula Court house waiting for it to open early in the morning. That’s normal, of course. I’ve been arrested for distributing political literature on Los Angeles Street. Okay, okay that’s normal in the U.S.. Nobody cares about that. But now they’re arresting 6-years-old kids. IS THAT NORMAL? Now that they’ve started to arrest little kids for loitering under a tree, what will they do next? Who will get arrested next? I have tried to explain to Irina what “loitering” means. But she still doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand why people don’t want her to sit under the shade of a willow tree. She said “But, uncle, Pokahantas didn’t get in trouble for sitting under Grandmother Willow. Didn’t Pokahantas live in the U.S? Wasn’t she American? Uncle, in the Ukraine where you live, do they arrest kids for sitting under a tree?”

When she sat under the tree, she was not in front of somebody’s home. She was sitting in front of the Parkside Village which has a 6’ high wall all around it. So no one from this walled community could have seen her under the willow tree with such low hanging branches. So who called the cops? It must have been somebody across Sanderson Street who lives in that weed infested hillbilly cabin. “Fear” is the greatest danger to national security. “Fear” is the illness that killed Travon Martin. It was F.D.R who said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Will the U.S be “the home of the cowards? “or” “the home of the brave?”