Policing, Racialization and Boundary Making in a NYC Subway Station

Policing, Racialization and Boundary Making in a NYC Subway Station

September 18th, 2007. 3:30 p.m.

After finally getting my French visa, I go into the 86th street subway station in the Upper East Side to wait for the 5 train. I enter the subway station and soon I notice a police officer standing behind a handcuffed guy sitting on a bench close to the turnstile. The person is looking down. The police officer is trying to look straight ahead, into nothingness, and is having a hard time trying to efface any emotions from his face. People are passing by and looking at the person. I can see strong reactions in their eyes, in what seems to me to be a mix of empathy and disapproval.

The way the police officer and the person held are located in the station draws much attention from the people passing by on their way in and out of the subway station. When I realize this, I try to make the situation less obvious. I wish I could hide the spectacle from the onlookers. Suddenly a woman with olive skin sits down at the opposite end of the bench where the person is. She is not intimidated or undecided. She sits and the police officer does not object. I immediately follow and sit next to her, closer to the “suspect”. Not long after, a middle aged woman with dyed blond hair and a postal service uniform sits next to me, even closer to the two main actors, not feeling threatened at all. By sitting next to the two people, it seemed that we have taken away a lot of the "abnormality" away from the situation, by using our bodies to physically and psychologically make it harder for people passing by to notice and look at the detainee. One exception is one person with a white cap and a tattoo who has seen the whole situation from across the gate on the other side of the turnstile.

After the mail-woman sits down she starts asking me questions in a somewhat “bad English.” I agree with her general statements about empathy, curiosity and solidarity. And she asks if I know what had happened. I said I do not. After this she ascertains “I am sure he is Mexican.” I ask why she thinks so. She says that it was because of his “features, hairstyle and attitude.” Immediately I ask her where she is from. She says proudly, “I am Puerto Rican.” She asks me where I am from and I say Mexico. Having explicitly established our “Latinity”, I then switch into Spanish. I say, “Es una pena que lo hayan detenido. Quien sabe que habrá hecho.” It is a shame they stopped him; I wonder what he did. She agrees and says that she is worried because “he clearly is a Latino and he makes all of us look bad.” I agreed with her. My sociological imagination has been wondering all this time about the “boundary-creation effects” of displaying this man as a criminal so publicly, without any context, now for more than five minutes and without any explicit purpose.

We stop talking, realizing that the answers lay next to us. We then move from being onlookers into being more active participants. I ask the police officer why he was holding him. He pretends not to hear and does not answer. I ask again. He says that, “he is taking care of him and that everything is under control.” I then ask if he is waiting for reinforcements to take him somewhere. He nods to answer the question while also indicating that he is not interested in conversation. I sense a certain sense of shame and doubt in the avoiding look of the policeman, like if he wished this was not his job. We ask what the guy has done and he repeats, “Everything is under control.” As if our main concern would be “order and safety.” He is doing his job and trying to present an aura of order and professionalism.

Given the policeman’s disengaged attitude, we start addressing the detainee directly, in Spanish. I ask him what had happened, and the very first thing he says is, “I was going to work.” Thus, establishing his primary identity as that of a responsible hard working person. He explains, “Se me estaba hacienda tarde. Vi el tren venir y para ahorrar tiempo, ya no compre el boleto y pues brinque, pues.” [I was late. I saw the train coming and to save time. I did not stop to buy the ticket and I jumped the turnstile.] Because of his accent I could tell that he was indeed from Central Mexico, either Puebla or Guerrero. He acted remorseful while he tells us that all he wanted to do was to get to work on time. He was wearing the white clothes typical of a restaurant bus boy.

After explaining his reason and his crime, the man hold shifts blame and starts repeating the phrase, “Este pendejo!” or “what an asshole!” referring to the police officer who happened to be African American. He is angry for the situation he is in and he reflects his anger to the policeman who stopped him. His way of referring to him, reflects the confrontational relationship between many working class Latinos and African Americans in New York City. After shifting blame, the man starts getting more nervous and desperate. But we are all powerless in regard to the situation. Noticing, the changed state of his captive, the police man asks us to stop the conversation. I tell the guy to calm down in Spanish, while making a gesture - bringing my open palms down slowly- in what I know the policeman will understand, and see as a response to his concerns about keeping his subject under control.

I tell the guy he will be fine, trying to calm him down and make him feel a little better, despite his desperation and obvious powerlessness, especially given what he sees as the low stakes of the rule he had broken. He tells us that he knows he will be fine but that he would be fined, and that he will waste a lot of time by being stopped and that he will be late to work. He will have his pay check diminished and could even lose his job. I assume, he is very angry because all of this will get on the way of him sending money to his family and saving money to go back to Mexico. So maybe being detained in the subway had happened to him before or we know people to whom this had happened. We do not get to ask because more policemen come and take the man to a patrol car outside of the subway station. This all happens too quickly.

After the event is over, I then board my train on my way to the Bronx. Inside the train car, next to me I see the guy with the white cap, presumably a second generation Puerto Rican, who had seen the whole thing from outside the turnstile. I ask him in English if he knows what had happened. He said that the guy had jumped the turnstile - followed by the statement, “the subway is too expensive.” I nod. He asks me how much the weekly pass is. I say I am not sure. He says it always is a hard situation to see someone taken for a petite crime of two dollars. I nod and we stay in silence with what feels like a feeling of solidarity with the captured man.

I then wondered what would have happened if the perpetrator had been white or more educated? Why was a Mexican, probably an undocumented worker with no knowledge of English, the favorite target of police officers? The man did not look particularly “dangerous” or “guilty” but he was indeed different, a minority and unable to speak English and defend himself or ask for his ticket or summon. The increased police presence in the in NYC subways, was first justified as anti-terrorism task, but here it functionally turned into immigration control and a reinforcement of stereotypes and social boundaries.
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Arriving at the Fordham Road stop on the 4 train line in the Bronx, a similar situation is going on. But this time the perpetrator is a Puerto Rican woman, she is free - she is not handcuffed. She does not speak English and one of the police officers is African American, and does not speak Spanish. But there is also a female Dominican police woman who not only acts as a translator but also as a broker and advocate. Fortunately, after hearing a convoluted story they let the woman go.
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This incident is not necessarily surprising giving the increase in police presence around the anniversary of September 11th, the anti "broken-windows" type of policing implemented by Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and the aim to increase immigrant deportations. Nonetheless, the racial card came to the fore in this set of social interactions. One could notice a very distant and somewhat condemning white Upper East Side constituency; a north-bound black population looking somewhat proud at the control of a “Mexican illegal” by an African American law enforcer. And a very sympathetic and empathetic set of Latino onlookers, including some who actively tried to intervene, find out more, and “normalize” or decriminalize the situation.

The incident in the Upper West Side either ended in the release of the worker after a fine. Or in his deportation, after this minor infraction was used by police officers to send him to the jurisdiction of ICE immigration officials who then most have filled deportation papers, something that has been increasingly the case, according to people who follow these issues

(http://familiesforfreedom.org/?q=taxonomy/term/1)

I am not justifying jumping the turnstiles but I just felt bad about the look in face of the detained man who, after years of probably being invisible in New York, suddenly felt very visible but still powerless, he was exposed, he looked ashamed like he wished he wasn’t there …