Let me begin by blurting out a few things:
- I rarely watch trailers for films at the theater I attend anymore because the selection is that great and this film did not disappoint.
- I knew the director of this film, Brian Lindstrom, was going to be in attendance and do a Q&A afterwards.
- Brian Lindstrom is married to Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, role model of mine, and generally amazing person — I knew there was a small chance she would also be in attendance of the film.
I did not know how absolutely incredible this film would be.
I did not know I would sneak down once the film is over, after seeing Cheryl enter with her husband, introduce myself and getting this photo with them.
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| photo mine! |
I did not know that Cheryl would reply to my tweet and say it was great to meet me. Or that Alien Boy's Twitter accounts would retweet it either.
What I do know is this:
I grew up in Spokane, Washington. In March of 2006, when I was about to turn 16, Spokane police officers
killed a disabled man named Otto Zehm falsely accused of stealing from a Zip Trip. He was beat, hogtied, tasered, gagged, sat on by 7 police officers until he passed out and never woke up.
The case, which was mortifying in both its initial context and later when the trial and settlement with Zehm dragged on seemingly forever, gained attention in Spokane but slowly died down over the five years it took to reach the settlement with Zehm's mother.
♢
A year later, in May of 2007,
again a man is murdered by police by being hogtied, tasered, and beaten in custody. This time I was working for the local newspaper and was in the newsroom when the story broke and listened to the debate of whether or not to use the term "hogtied".
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On the 4th of July, 2007,
17 young men and women were arrested in downtown Spokane for, get this, protesting Spokane police brutality. I knew several of these young people and while I was not personally in attendance of the events I very easily could have been.
I was at the jail when they all were released and listened to their stories of the guards making fun of them and the police beating them with their batons. I looked at their bruised and bloodied wrists from being hogtied with plastic restraints far too tight. Mind you, most of those charged were minors.
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Certainly police have difficult jobs, certainly they arrest more people without incident than not, but when it comes to police brutality what do we, as a society do?
Seeing Alien Boy reminded me of these cases from my life in Spokane. It also reminded me how challenging it seems to confront issues such as these that seem so far far far away from my grasp. From my little life in Bellingham, my little job, and my little apartment, and my little voice how do I take a stand against police brutality?
I've worked with a lot of cops, I know a lot of cops, and I like a lot of cops. But any human, cop or otherwise, that would inflict such violence and malice upon another human is intolerable. They are a blight upon society; a blight upon the communities they're tasked with serving. The police officers in the film – who tackled, tased, beat, and kicked a man — then hogtied and put him in squad car and drove away showed little or no remorse for their actions. When death is seen as an acceptable outcome of using force on the defenseless voices must be raised, loud ones.
If you cannot trust the police, those charged with keeping you safe, who can you trust?
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After the film I spoke with the director, Brian Lindstrom, who was incredibly gracious during both the Q&A and my sneaking down to get a photo with his wife. I asked him "what do you?" and he kind of stared at me for a moment until I said "knowing what you know, seeing what you've seen with this case of brutality, what do you do?"
"Tell stories like James'"
♢
