On being stopped by the cops and other grievances

I am a part-time U.S. census worker. On Saturday, May 22, I was walking from the 3400 block on Day Avenue, where I had parked my car, toward McDonald Street to look for addresses that I had to do in my census binder. Two Miami-Dade police officers passed me headed in the same direction.

As I approached Indiana Street, the two officers stopped in the middle of Day Avenue and turned around as I passed. I crossed 32nd Avenue (McDonald Street) and started looking at my papers to see where I wanted to start. On the corner of Gifford Lane and Day Ave, I saw a police car behind me. I said to myself, “I know he isn’t following me.”

The officer exited his vehicle and stated over his radio, “I have her now.”

He then said, “Excuse me, miss.” I stopped and replied, “Yes, what seems to be the problem?” He said the police had received numerous calls about a “suspicious white woman” with an orange shirt who had been driving a black Mercedes and walking in the neighborhood.

The officer asked if had I seen the Mercedes, and I replied ‘No.’ I then said that I knew that getting stopped by police would happen to me sooner or later; I just didn’t know when. I asked the officer not to go anywhere because I wanted him to speak with my supervisor.

I called and informed her that I was being detained by an officer and gave him the phone to speak with her. While he was on the phone, two more officers came up. They also exited their vehicles and informed the first officer that I had just walked passed them and they did not stop me because I did not fit the description that had been given.

One of the officers called a code over the radio and let me hear the call that had come in. After listening to the radio, the officer again stated, “She is not white and she is not wearing an orange shirt or driving a black Mercedes.

The first officer asked me where my car was parked. I told him that it was on the other side of McDonald Street by the park. I also told him I had been up and down in the hot sun on Day Avenue, Gifford Lane and Matilda Street for about a week and a half. I was just trying to do a job, but I felt that I was being treated like a criminal in my own neighborhood. I grew up here.

We African-Americans living in the Grove are being run out by the whites. Rents are ridiculously high; and it’s being done like that so that African-Americans – some of whom have been here all their lives – have to pack up and move.

I have seen the white people run the Stop sign on the corner of Day Avenue and Hibiscus within view of the police. Nothing happens. Many mornings on my way to work I have to swerve my car when I get to the corner of Mundy Street and Day Avenue because the Cubans fly through there like there is no Stop sign.

Our children have to play in the middle of the road because the white people have taken over the parks. Their dogs get better treatment than us or our children. African Americans of the Grove can not have functions at our own homes because the whites and Cubans call the police. But they can have parties until the wee hours of the morning and park where they please, and you never see a police come by or say anything.

We can’t even have Goombay anymore because they want to take over. They are even trying to take over our schools and rename them. Can anybody tell me what Jose Marti has ever done for an African-American person?

Joyce Powell,
Coconut Grove