“Whoop. Whoop. Whoop.” It was the sound of a police siren.
Never a welcome shriek. Always attention-commanding. One hundred twenty-three
decibels of pure heart-racing, blood-pressure-rising menace. And usually a sign
that you’ve done something – at least on the surface of it – wrong. The
consciousness of that fact making it even more dreadful. But I had scanned King
Street for police cars before I took “sireen” as they call it here. I had just
taken the shot heard ‘round the territory.’” So I was shocked, shocked say to
feel 29,000 or my 30,000 ear hairs instantly flatten out. The former
Senator/former peace officer was talking animatedly to two women. He was
smiling. had not noticed my dull silver
finish 1988 Daihatsu Charade when I was initially stuck in traffic right in
front of the 200-year-old stone staircase with “U.S. Probation Office” written
above the door where he was standing outsideI powered down my automatic windows
and snapped the picture as former Police Captain Adelbert M. Bryan jumped off of
the limestone brick landing down to the black asphalt street below and began
chasing after me on foot. Bryan had been alerted by the two ladies he was
casually chatting up in front of Probation. I got one shot of him not looking
at the camera. And when we developed the black and white film later I saw in
the second shot that the two women were pointing me out. Not unlike that famous
photo of the MLK assassination aftermath. Luckily, there was a break in the
one-way traffic and I was able to speed off. But before I could get separation,
I heard the blaring siren of a Virgin Islands Police Department cruiser and saw
the rotating beacons of the cherry lights that indicated that I was to pull
over on the Christiansted waterfront, right in front of the old Chase Manhattan
Bank. I had no choice. I pulled over onto the yellow diagonal painted lines
that meant “No Parking.”
Assessing the
situation, I stuffed my Nikon camera under the passenger seat of the five-door
Korean hatchback. And I jammed the button to power up the passenger-side
windows. Almost as quickly, Bryan was leaning down on the passenger-side glass
(as it was going up) and halting its progress. He was to my right, along with a
tall, severe-looking caramel-colored woman who turned out to be his attorney,
Lisa Moorhead. To my left were the two V.I.P.D. officers. They did not appear
to be pleased.
“You know you
have to ask a person’s permission before you take their picture,” one of them,
the Crucia-Rican one, said. He had a pockmarked face like Noriega. They say
here that God doesn’t like ugly. Right now, either did I.
In the
background, to my right, I heard Attorney Moorhead seconding the motion.
“That’s right.
That’s the law,” she offered. But I knew that wasn’t correct. Good thing the newspaper I worked for got my press
credentials updated every year by the police department. I pulled out a photo
ID and handed it to the silent cop, a light-skinned black man. He handed the
laminated photo ID perfunctorily to his partner. Good thing they didn’t ask for
my driver’s license and registration. Because I had neither.
“This don’t mean
nuttin,’ the Vieques-born cop said.
“Actually, it
does,” I retorted. “It is a legitimate press badge issued by your own police
department. I am a credentialed reporter on a public street in America taking a
photo of a public figure as part of my job.”
That really
threw them. They didn’t know what to make of that. I myself was surprised at
such directness of thought and boldness of speech emanating from my person.
“But you still
have to ask the man’s permission first,” the verbal cop with the pockmarked
face said. The taller one nodded. And Moorhead echoed in the background.
“That’s right,”
she insisted. “It’s the law.”
Meanwhile, unbeknownst
to me at the time, Bryan was reaching into the car to try to grab my camera. I
saw him out of the corner of my eye and pushed it further under the seat – out
of his reach – because although he had stopped the window from going all the
way up, there was not enough space for him to lean his body all the way into
the car. Later I realized that he had broken the mechanism on that side the
powers the window. But right now I was concerned about all the glass on the
hatchback. Bryan was pacing around my car, looking for a way in.
“I’m afraid
you’re going to have to turn over your film,” the cop with the pineapple skin
said.
“Well, then
you’re going to have to arrest me,” I repeated. “Because I’m not turning my
camera over to you.
“We don’t want
your camera,” the cop said with a Spanish accent. “We just want the film inside
of it. In fact, just expose the film in front of us and you can keep the film.
How’s that?”
“I can’t do
that,” I said emphatically. “That film is property of the newspaper I work for.
I need my editor’s permission to destroy it. I’m afraid that you’ll have to
arrest me.”
“Look now,” he
reasoned. We’re just trying to do our job, too. No need to be difficult. You
heard the Attorney tell you what the law is in this matter. She wouldn’t steer
you wrong. Now just pop that film out of the camera and we can all be on our
way.”
A crowd had
started to form around the scene. I saw this as a good thing. Witnesses. We
were ironically twenty feet away from the Scale House that Virgin Islands
Tourism operated out of, and I noticed one of the girls who I knew from the
office had come out to look and see what was happening. Later, she told me that
she figured I must be the most wanted fugitive in the history of the United States,
to be treated like that in public. And the silent cop had gone back to the
squad car and was talking on his police radio. I didn’t like the prospects of
more officers on the scene. I only had two eyes. And I was going cross-eyed
trying to keep track of four people moving around the car as it was. I was a
cloudy day, but I was perspiring heavily in the 90-degree heat. The adrenaline
pumping through my veins made my neck feel like I had gills, with no slits to
breathe out of.
During the
commotion, the cops never once asked me to exit the vehicle, which would have
made it easy for them to seize my camera. I sat in the driver’s seat the whole
time, stonewall-dealing from my gray fabric bucket seat from a position of
dominance. Or so I thought at the time. They must have known by now that I was
at least pigheaded enough not to turn over my film without a “fight.” But my
resolve was weakening as the mute officer was walked back to us with the
stilted steps of “orders to be followed.” He looked up at the people craning
their heads and necks out of windows on Church Street and from the Hamilton
Mews. The crowd that had gathered on the street was now up to twenty or thirty
people.
“We want you to
come to the police station with us,” the taller cop said after sighing first.
The sphinx cop could speak after all. The Attorney seemed happy with the
directive. The shorter cop not so much so. “But you can drive in your own car.
We’ll follow behind of you.”
“Behind of you”
was a local expression that meant the same thing as the same phrase without the
word “of” in it. It was one of those rare colloquialisms that was not a
syncopated form of Creole-English. Most of the patois they spoke here was
abbreviated and short on words – I thought – because it the omnipresent heat
stifled loquaciousness.
On the one
hand, I was hopeful, if not pleased. If they arrested me and towed my vehicle
to Police Headquarters in Estate Golden Grove ten miles away, it would be
pretty easy for them to say that “vandals” or “thieves” had broken into my car
and stolen my camera while it was in police custody – and I was safely
“detained.” All’s they’d have to do is break one of the windows and take it.
Then I was not just out the film, but a $1,200 investment that I had bought half-off
because the hurricane had struck four months ago. That’s why I was taking the
picture of the ex-Senator. He was on trial for looting-related charges
following the 1989 storm. He, the former police captain, claimed that he did
not know if was against the law to take building supply items from Caribe Home
Center without paying for them. I didn’t care what his stated position was – or
what the facts were in his case – I just knew that his federal trial was slated
to begin in just a few weeks – and here he was whooping it up, casual as could
be on the premises of the same U.S. District Court building where he was about
to face the music – it was a natural-born front page news photo. That was. If
I could get the camera and its contents back to the daily St. Croix Avis where
I worked. And even if I did. There was no guarantee that the photos I
had taken would even come out. They could be blurry. It was stock ___ film. The
cheapest film money could buy – back when cameras still took film. So nothing
was a given. And all of that taking for granted that I could get out of my
current quasi-legal detention. The precinct station was a short distance away.
That was probably where they’d take me. We could turn right on Hospital Street,
right onto Company Street – and then five blocks down to Market Street – where
we’d turn right. What would happen after that was what I was more than a little
worried about. Then I’d have to exit my vehicle. And the camera would be in my
car unattended. Perfect opportunity for the “random vandal” scenario. I’d need
to hedge my bet if the film was going to be protected.
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