“Where Are The Good Apples?”

Some of us never made it into the basket.

Image by BodyWorn by Utility from Pixabay

May 5, 1991, I was working for a uniformed (not plain clothes) detective agency. I had a post on the 4-midnight shift. Most of the time it was quiet, which is how I liked it. If it wasn’t, then that meant there was some sort of disturbance or issue. That only happened once or twice so, cool. I got lucky.

However, all hell broke loose in the neighborhood I was stationed in. Mt. Pleasant, ah the irony, was a quiet little town located inside the D.C. borders. You can read about the specifics of the Mt. Pleasant Riots here.

Here are some excerpts from WAMU 88.5

Two cops are walking the beat.

“They tell this guy, who didn’t speak a nick of English, to ‘get rid of the alcohol’ or ‘put it away’,” says Sueiro. “But he’s drunk and he’s got cohorts around him and they start to… create a ruckus. The street starts to fill up with people.”

The police “begin to get very serious with this guy, like ‘we’re gonna lock you up’,” he continues.

One of the officers points her gun and shoots the guy. [He ultimately survived.] The official report says he had pulled a knife on her. Others, including one D.C. Latino man involved in the riots, say that’s not what happened at all. He asked that his…