PIT PAT AND THE POLICE

Pit Pat once told me that the most powerful and well funded gang in the fine city Chicago is the Chicago Police Department. Once, upon departing an ISO* meeting on his bike, he gave his comrade’s car a friendly rap on the hood and waved goodbye. As he pushed off he noticed almost immediately that he was being tailed by two strangers in an unmarked car. He was in the middle of Pilsen neighborhood, so he decided to try and dodge them. After weaving in and out of various alleyways and parking lots, the guys finally identify themselves as cops, so Pit Pat braked stunned that he had been followed for no apparent reason. The police at this point, more worked up than a pair of pit bulls, thought my bro was trying to evade them, which of course he was, but only before they id themselves as police. They cuffed him, hit him across the face, grabbed him by the back of his helmet and threw him into the back of the car. They charged him with resisting arrest and threw him in jail for the night. When they booked him, they asked him where he was born and he told them, Hong Kong. Of course this made the po-po laugh and play and make racist comments and pretty much live up to the stereotype. They said things like “Oh, I chink I have the wong number!” And when they found his anti-war literature they started getting belligerent again. The worst part of it is that when he confronted them about their unnecessary force and comments, they all banded together and played like it never happened. I was going to say they 'played dumb' in that last sentence, but dumb isn't a game to them. They do that professionally.

* International Socialists Organization