WITH HER WORDS, THE POET GWENDOLYN BROOKS PAINTED STRAIGHTFORWARD, UNAPOLOGETIC PORTRAITS OF ORDINARY PEOPLE.

In a situation like this … with two cars following each other, in this neighborhood, it ain’t nothing but drugs and guns."

  That, according to Imhotep McKinsey, is what New Orleans police officers offered by way of explanation on the evening of Nov. 30. McKinsey and another man were pulling up to McKinsey’s home on Hollygrove Street, followed in a separate car by two female friends (the group had just returned from an African dance class where McKinsey and the other man serve as drummers), when a police squad car pulled up.

  McKinsey says four officers jumped out, brandishing their weapons and shouting for the two men to put their hands up. McKinsey and the other man were taken out of the car and handcuffed.

  The 33-year-old musician, needless to say, was frightened. "I had never been handcuffed until that night," he recalls. "I’ve never been arrested." The officers’ weapons pointed in his face brought back memories from two years ago when McKinsey was the victim of an armed robbery. "It was the same kind of gun," he observed.

  At first, officers told McKinsey they’d been pulled over because of a broken taillight. Then came the questions about drug use.

  "‘Y’all got those dreads in your head. I know y’all been smoking [marijuana],’" McKinsey recalls an officer’s questioning. "[The officer] shined the flashlight in my face and told me to follow it. She said she could tell that I’d been using drugs."

  A woman whom I’ll refer to as J was in the car that was following McKinsey and his companion. She does not want to use her name because a family member is a police officer and she is afraid that discussing this incident publicly will cause that person problems at work. "I was shaking," she says, remembering what happened. "I saw my whole life flash before me. Especially when they got out of the car [with the guns]. They were jumpy."

  According to J, the officer that came over to her car also said that the reason they were stopped was because when two cars are seen trailing each other in the Hollygrove neighborhood, they make the assumption that drugs and guns are involved.

  Meanwhile, J says, she watched the officers search the car McKinsey and his companion had been in. "They took [McKinsey’s] glasses off, shone lights in his eyes. They felt in his hair." (Both men wear their hair in dreadlocks.)

  McKinsey recounts that the entire incident took about 20 to 30 minutes. Afterward, the officers got back into their vehicle, without apology, and left. "They took the handcuffs off and said that because they didn’t know us, had never seen us before, they had to do it like that." McKinsey has lived in the Hollygrove area for 11 years.

  A spokesman for the New Orleans Police Department did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

  A harrowing experience for those involved. Notable not because it happened or because of the details (guns drawn for a broken taillight?), but because we are not surprised to hear it. And – in a country that, as a matter of policy, demonizes other nations for similar actions against its citizens – we should be. If what McKinsey and his companions say is true. If officers really did detain Wilbert Thomas in a parking lot and do a body cavity search with a pair of pliers. If people of color are unlawfully detained every day in this country simply because they are driving the "wrong" car at the "wrong" time in the "wrong "place." If there are Diallos and Louimas being killed and brutalized in the name of law enforcement. If it is not all just a bad dream, then, no matter what neighborhood we live in, we should all be wondering what’s next.

  There are no easy answers. There are people involved in criminal activities – in every community – and we want police officers to be there to protect the innocent whenever possible. Clearly, though, there are some individuals in law enforcement who see their badges as a license to act with impunity. But I don’t think it’s just about individuals. We obviously need to examine the philosophy on which our law enforcement system is built. While there are a lot of honest men and women in law enforcement, the nationwide epidemic of racial profiling and police misconduct toward the poor and the powerless is an obvious sign that the disease is not just in individuals. It must also infect the system that continues to foster disturbing and destructive behavior. .