Helen came to the social service office in hysterics and screamed she couldn’t take “the dirty bitch upstairs any more!.” Helen was not EDP. Just fed up with her quadmate Claudia who kept slamming her door, pacing the apartment and ranting that God was sending her messages through the news anchor on 1010 WINS. Claudia was EDP.
The other case manager (CM) in our office called 911 and NYPD arrived five minutes later. They clammed up when they heard that Claudia is EDP and waited until EMS arrived.
Brief interlude: While we waited in the lobby, Benjamin, the biggest drug user in the building, stormed through the front door with a long cut on his temple and dried blood on his chin. It was late-December and he was wearing one shoe. There is a scene at the beginning of Earl Sweatshirt’s EARL video where the Odd Future collective pours cough syrup, weed, pills, beer and other drugs into a blender, turns it on and chugs the cocktail. They get FUBAR’d then have seizures, bleed from face holes and pull off their finger nails. It’s disturbing, but that’s basically a day in the shitty life for Benjamin. He has serious addictions and if he ever stops getting high he will be left with nothing but that life, which would suck to live in.
I asked him what had happened. He continued to limp-sprint through the lobby but shouted that he was attacked yesterday and spent the night at the hospital. He couldn’t talk right now, he said, because he had to get to his methadone program before it closed. For the record, that’s the methadone program that continues to give him methadone, replacement for heroin, even when he comes to the clinic high as hell. He came back from his room and paused long enough to tell me he lost the shoe while running away from his assailants whom he claimed stole his wallet, money and drugs in the projects. Benjamin is white in a dark-skinned neighborhood. He's from South Carolina and he’s a white trash racist. He told me the thieves were black and they robbed him because he’s not.
Actually, they probably robbed him because his torso is like a Ziploc bag full of wet oatmeal, he was fumbling with cash and he was already high.
I didn't say that though -- that's bad social work -- and, anyway, Benjamin was dangerously close to missing his methadone. He limped away and we tabled deeper discussion for whenever he was coherent enough to chat.
Back to Claudia. EMS arrived and we all proceeded with caution to her apartment
Claudia is diagnosed with schizophrenia, which she does not manage. A nurse injects her with Haldol, an anti-psychotic drug, every two weeks (when she does not avoid him). Even at baseline, Claudia is very sick, but she is never sick enough to welcome the cops into her home. She pretended to sleep when we arrived and a gruff lady cop threatened to bust open the door if she did not open it. This bothered me. Why goad someone with a mental illness?
Meanwhile, I stood in the living room with an EMS worker. You’re not a New Yorker, are you?” he asked.
I told him I was not raised in New York City and asked how he could tell.
“You’re too nice for this shit."
That was before "this shit" had even started.
My coworker confidently coaxed Claudia out and she emerged from her lair with six bags strapped to her shoulders. After a life spent on the streets and in shelters, she does not feel comfortable in her own home. She moved in ten months earlier, but her closets and drawers remained empty. Her possessions were still crammed in woven plastic bags.
The forceful lady cop told Claudia to drop the bags so she and her partner could inspect them before they took her to the psychiatric unit of a local hospital. Claudia refused.
Again, the cop told her to lose the bag. Again, Claudia refused.
The cop approached and told her a third time to drop the bags. Claudia called her a “prejudiced bitch” and spit in her face.
The cop grabbed Claudia and shoved her into a chair. She choked Claudia with her right forearm and held Claudia's face against a windowsill with her left hand.
“She spit on the wrong fucking person!” the cop screamed and turned to the EMS workers. “Get a mask on this bitch because if she spits on me again I’ll kick her ass.”
The other cop helped his partner restrain Claudia by holding her arm behind her back and grinding her chest into the chair. EMS clamped a mask on her like she was an anxious animal at the vet’s office. The mask muffled Claudia's screams.
“You’ll all burn in hell with Satan!”
My EMS buddy met her furious eyes. “Burn in hell?” he asked. “Save me a seat.”
She called him an Uncle Tom as they shoved her on a stretcher and took her out of the room.
* * *
That was one of the worst, most conflicting moments of my life. It was like the cop was looking for a reason to act aggressively, to blow off some steam.
What should the cop have done the moment Claudia spit in her face? Why did she provoke that response from Claudia? Why did she escalate the tension by first threatening to kick in Claudia's door then confronting her in the living room? Did the cop use excessive force when she slammed Claudia into the wall and threatened her? Or was that a reasonable, understandable response to being spit on?
On a broader scale, the incident highlighted the fraught, adversarial relationship between the police and poor people. Would the cop have behaved so aggressively from the start if she was responding to an EDP at an Upper East Side penthouse just a few blocks south?
What do you think?
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