by Carol Fondiller | December 1, 1968
The following is a first-hand report of a true incident. The narrator prefers to remain anonymous.
Hey, man, what the hell can you do? I mean like the police come down here and bust. Like it’s their thing, man. And I’m not political. I’m not going to get organized and go to committee meetings and like that. Wow — I mean, look — a couple months ago I was down by Windward. I just stopped by to get a candy bar and dig the headlines. You know, bang, bang, we got 5,000 Vietnamese and 500 college students. Right? Well, this cop car pulls up. It’s about 2 A.M. The Crown is closed and a lot of spade cats are lounging around–just rapping–these cops get out–everybody against the wall–except the spade cats. They make them lie on the sidewalk, hands clasped behind their heads — no reason.
They run makes on all of us and we wait there for forty minutes, see, at least. Then a cop comes up to me, makes remarks about my long hair. Dig? I mean they were comin’ down real hard on everyone–verbally and physically. But everyone seemed to know this was the time to cool it. I mean no one answered back. Like we were dead. And they wanted us to say somethin’ back. They kind of suggested to the black guys that they would be rousted again if they had balls to come down and lap up some booze at the posh and elegant Crown, dig?
I mean like it happened about two months ago. All I remember is that those cops didn’t look any older than 20 or 25– and they acted like they were on a training exercise like in the Army–you know, how to round up and bust a lot of people at once. And man, they knew how to do it.
Well, there was this one Mexican cat; he works at a cafe or somethin’. Little skinny guy. And they looked at his I.D. and asked him what kind of a name that was with a “J” in the middle of it. Wow! That poor little guy was so scared–and they say somethin’ else– and he can’t answer so they knock him down. That guy can’t speak English very well.
They took my D.D. Form 214, my only form of identification– no, man, didn’t run me in. Just ran a make and hassled. Haven’t got my I.D. back yet. I remember one cop’s badge, #344. Anyway, I’m splittin’ for Japan in two weeks man.