In the past I have talked about police in India, as has Nandan on his blog.
I want to share a story about police in America and Indian people and give some thoughts.
A police car in a small city in Alabama videotaped American police attacking an Indian man around 11 February 2015. The story is as follows: An Indian family is living in a small rural city population 45,000, with the husband working as an engineer in the area. The cultural background to this information is that rural America is imagined by some to be a less attractive place to live, because typically there are fewer resources and opportunities in rural places. There tends to be less diversity, fewer and lower paying jobs, less education, less entertainment, and perhaps more expensive services in these places. Advantages for these places might be less expensive real estate, local culture that people like, the privilege of being in a quieter place, and maybe some people might have social ties to such places. In this story, a 57 year old Indian gentleman went to this town because his son and her wife had recently had a child, and he was visiting them. This Indian grandfather did not know any English, and he had just been in the United States for a few days.
In the video, the camera attached to the police car records the grandfather walking on the sidewalk of a suburban residential district. Police drive near him, get out of the car, and begin to question him. The police in America are routine with their questioning, and in general if they think someone may be involved in a crime they do what they can to stop the person and encourage them to talk. In this case, the police must have gotten a call that there was someone suspicious around, and in my opinion, people in rural America might well see an Indian man and think that he is suspicious because in towns like this one the people may not be accustomed to seeing dark skin, or a person from another country, or someone not wearing American clothes, or someone who does not speak English, or anyone different in any way. It might also be unusual in these neighborhoods to walk around outside, as Americans are fond of driving, and in rural areas do not regularly walk though public spaces as people in more urban places might routinely walk around their communities.
Most of the action in the video happens within the first two minutes. After the police drive to the man, stop their car, and walk to him, they determine that he cannot speak English, but still talk to him in English. This is a rural place and perhaps these police have never met anyone who does not speak English. The police have rural accents and in the minds of many or most Americans, their accents are indicators of less education and perhaps something which urban people would think is quaint or maybe think makes the person low class. During the minute of talking the Indian gentleman seeks to walk away, which is a taboo among American police who expect that people must talk to them when the police stop them. In India walking away from troublesome situations is often a good idea because that de-escalates a problem, and typically does not escalate one unless there is a particular reason why a person is targeted for aggression. I think in this case, the Indian gentleman was confused and could imagine no reason why anyone would bother him, and was being polite by gently leaving the area. After lightly trying to leave several times, the police throw the Indian man to the ground and broke his back. I expect that the police were scared that this Indian gentleman was trying to kill them, which is a concept which would be completely foreign to any Indian person. Probably the tension was increased because the police were white and the Indian was not white, and perhaps they thought he was African or Muslim. Just in general in America, and especially in rural areas, people often worry about being killed. American police are very scary in certain circumstances.
After the attack the police continue to talk to the man in English, on the presumption that he must know some English. In the video the only English word that the man says is “India”. They try to make him sit up then stand, but he cannot walk. I think for my own part, if I were stopped by police, then I would have in my mind that one possibility is that they could throw me to the ground and maybe I would be a little prepared for the attack. In the case of the Indian gentleman I am sure he had no idea that the police might do this.
If I had to describe the difference of thought in this situation, it was that the American police are very quick to feel threatened and to panic, and in India, things like walking down the street in a residential neighborhood are considered routine activities that will not draw suspicion. As a white person who has visited India, sometimes I felt that I got extra attention for being foreign, but the attention was curiosity or friendliness. I do not think that I ever scared any Indian person or made anyone think that I would attack them.
One nice thing that I believe about American police versus Indian police is that American police are not corrupt. Indian police often ask for bribes, protection money, sell illegal permits, and otherwise try to gather small amounts of political power and use it to make money. Sometimes also they beat people as punishment if they cannot get bribes. Often groups of Indian police are corrupt together, and they know each other are corrupt. I rarely hear about corruption among American police. When there is a corrupt American policeman, he almost always has to be corrupt alone, because even though police officers will protect each other I think no police officer wants to work around anyone corrupt, and they in general are scared of anything going wrong at their jobs and maybe a little scared in general. I am not surprised that these police attacked the Indian gentleman just because I sympathize with how worried they must have been about a strange brown person who did not speak English and who kept walking away from them, when it is a huge fear of police to have someone walk away and when no American would do that to police in the Indian way of leaving to avoid trouble. One nice thing about Indian police as compared to American police is that they are not continually afraid that the people are trying to kill them and they are not always worried that they would die. If American police asked for bribes like Indian police do then probably Americans would kill them.
Of course what the American police did is completely wrong, and I have nothing good to say about that, but I only wanted to say that what they did is also very American, and that many other American police would have done the same thing in the same situation. At the heart of this is a lack of cultural understanding and the realization that not all people think and act in the same way, and there was a clash of cultures here in which people from different cultures could not understand each other and they interpreted each other in very different ways.
There is fundraising happening at Sureshbhai Patel’s Recovery Fund. Some news stories are also there. I wish him a good recovery and peace for his family. The police who attacked him should be dismissed as police, but I feel that they personally are not the problem. The bigger problem is American police culture in which this sort of thing happens much to often, and dismissing the individuals who attacked this man does not address the problem that so many police are ready to do this again.