Last night I went to a training session to be an Elizabeth Warren volunteer. You’ll be hearing a lot more about Liz on Wise Madness and my Facebook and Instagram accounts. Notice that she’s now Liz; she’s gone straight from a last name to a nickname. I’m more comfortable supporting Liz than Warren especially as I call Bernie, Bernie, and I’m not supporting him. I always called Hillary, Hillary, though not much for Hill.
I’m supposed to organize events. It’s me, I bet you can guess what I want to organize, that’s right concerts. Some people have money, some people have skills, I have musical connections and experience. We should all contribute in the ways we are particularly suited. I’m now percolating ideas. I have three broad categories, approaching people with space to host house concerts, venues willing to donate their space, and online concerts. Most important of all, is finding musicians to play. If you would like to participate in any of these ways let me know. I’m getting up my nerve to ask bigger names that I don’t know as well to perform. I know that my eyes are bigger than my anxiety stomach so I have to not let my imagination run ahead of what I can do. I should find someone official in the campaign to run these ideas by.
If none of this works out I’ll make phone calls and man tables. I must do something. I’ve sat on the sidelines too long. I sat on the sidelines last election and looked what happened. The campaign also needs writers, I can certainly do that. I’m doing that right now.
I was hoping they would serve food but they didn’t, so I did my go to out of the house dinner of dollar pizza. Google failed me and sent me to $1.50 pizza. It was better and bigger than the dollar variety. It was just as you’d expect, intermediate between a dollar and a full-priced slice.
Now to flash back to Friday; I had an adventure that I never wrote about because I was out all day Saturday at the Hudson West Folk Festival. I went to Aldi to pick up a few things. I got off the bus at 231st street and Broadway and witnessed an assault. An older gentleman, who looked a bit unsteady, stepped off the sidewalk and into the crosswalk. There was a car parked in the bus stop, behind a bus. He started to back up right into the gentleman. The pedestrian did what everyone does in that situation, he banged on the car’s trunk so the driver would stop. As I crossed the street I heard the driver start to scream at the pedestrian. I did not like the way he sounded and took out my cell phone. When I reached the other side of the street the driver got out of the car and confronted the pedestrian. I watched closely as if it got out of hand I was going to call the cops. I waited too long. Next thing I knew I saw the driver pull his fist back, I missed the punch because of intervening people or cars, but I saw the pedestrian fall back. I immediately called 911 and crossed back to see how the gentleman was and so I could tell the police.
I was right about the gentleman being unsteady, he had just gotten out of the hospital with a stroke. He was very upset. He told me that driver said that he thinks the driver told him he was a cop. He was having a hard time. The cops took forever to come. Then I saw that the driver hadn’t driven off so I took a picture of him and his car including the license plate. I was aghast to see that he had a young child clinging to his knee and a woman with him. It certainly looked like his wife and child. A father went ballistic and assaulted a stranger with his young son in the car.
The police took so long to get there that I called again. This time I was able to give the car’s license number. While I was on the phone the police showed up. I immediately went over to them and pointed out both the victim and the assailant and gave a brief recount of what I saw, what I just told you in almost the same words. I didn’t mention what the victim told me. I just gave what I personally witnessed.
I then went over to the victim, I thought two cops were talking to him but it was EMS workers. I should have noticed the FDNY on their shirts. They were wonderful. Their manner was so reassuring, the listened closely. They took him into the ambulance. As he was walking to it I heard him shout, “I want to press charges!”
I waited around and waited for someone to take my statement. I did one thing wrong. I was listening while the driver talked to the cops and interjected that he was lying. I should have just let the cops do their job then waited for my turn.
The problem was my turn wasn’t coming. I went to the cop in charge and asked if he wanted to talk to me and get my contact info as I was the only witness still there. Everyone else had left the scene or not seen what happened.
I see that I’m a big unclear on the order of events but I’ll do the best I can. He told me that they didn’t need my contact info as the witness said he wasn’t pressing charges. I said that I heard him say he did. I didn’t leave. I still wanted to tell them what happened.
A little later the cop came to me and now wanted my contact info. He treated me far more confrontationally than he did the assailant. He started by saying, “There’s a camera there, pointing to a building on the corner, that recorded everything so be careful what you say.” I thought this was an effort to intimidate me. I’m a witness, I didn’t have a dog in this fight, I didn’t know the victim or the assailant. If I wasn’t there to be helpful why was I spending all this time waiting to talk to the police? He didn’t see it that way. I asked why he was talking to me now after saying he said he didn’t need to earlier. He said, “things change.” He hadn’t spoken to the victim in the interim so I suspect that he had been hoping I’d leave and when he didn’t he realized he couldn’t just let me go without talking to me. That would look bad if I later made a report.
I told him the story, exactly as I told you including the fact that I didn’t see the punch connect, just the assailant drawing his fist back and the victim falling back. I didn’t see the contact. The cop challenge me and said, “Before you said you saw him punch him.” I told him no, I said exactly what I just said now. I was very careful with what I said as I wanted to be a good witness. I know people start filling in blanks that they didn’t see and I didn’t want to do that.
He tried to intimidate me again and said that he had a mic on and had been recording everything I we said since he got out of his car and that I said I saw the driver punch the pedestrian in the face. I told him that I never said that and that I was glad it was recorded as when he listens to it he could hear that I’m wrong. I brought up that I heard the driver was a cop and thought he was trying to protect him. He denied it. Now maybe the guy wasn’t a cop. The victim was very confused, he had just gone through trauma and he was in the aftermath of a stroke. He could have been mistaken. But the cop was certainly taking the assailants side and that would explain why he was acting like he was accepting the young driver’s story that it was all the fault of the elderly pedestrian. When the driver was talking to the cops and told how he got out of the car and started the confrontation the cops acted like that was a reasonable thing to do. They didn’t question him at all at what he was thinking.
I know that I should report what happened to somebody. I don’t know who. I’m so bad at taking action. I should have done something the next day. It’s not too late, I should do something. I took a picture of the cop’s car including the number so I have all the information I need to identify them.
I hate to mention race but in a confrontation like this, it is important. You should be wondering about it. The victim and the head cop, the lieutenant I spoke to, were both black. The driver was white or Hispanic. I would have said white but he looked like the actor Kirk Acevedo who is Puerto Rican. As this was the Bronx that makes it more likely. He was one or the other. Don’t jump to any conclusions. I’m just giving the facts. I’m still trying to be a good witness.
Wise Madness 