Blue and red lights illuminated the night, casting an eerie glow on my blissful naivety. It was a moment that forever altered my perception of authority, safety, and the complex dynamics between African Americans and law enforcement. My fathers arrest will forever haunt me as a nightmare I can never escape. I was way too young to be able to process all of this. At a time when I was making vital progress in discovering right and wrong, law and order incarcerated my father. My father’s detention by the police disrupted father-son relationships, perpetuated stereotypes, and sowed a deep-rooted mistrust of authority. With this exploration, I want you to understand all this was deeply traumatic and is something I still realize influences different opinions I may have, so any examples of ignorance you may read in here are not said in irony, but infantile incompetence. 

The shock, worry, and uncertainty surrounding my fathers detention made me feel defenseless and abandoned, causing an immediate emotional rift that hijacked a promising paternal relationship. My capacity to feel open in conversation was undermined when I started to doubt the sincerity of our exchanges and struggled to comprehend the circumstances of his detention. I was innocent, and these were adult things—things I should have known nothing about. I think part of the reason my and my fathers relationship was so bad was because of the trauma response from losing my innocence at such a young age. I turtled up and vented into a shell, so with my father physically around and me living in the closest thing to social isolation, a kid at that age could leave no room for us to truly develop a relationship. We talked through letters and the monthly visit we would take to go see him, but that is far from the typical family dynamic. 

The arrest of my father served as a sobering reminder of the unfavorable perceptions attached to people who end up in the criminal justice system. In the aftermath, I discovered that while knowing him to be a complex person with strengths and faults like anybody else, I had unintentionally assigned him these stereotypes. I could not separate that because he had ended up in a bad situation and made a bad decision, those actions do not make him inherently a bad person or a bad father. The dispersing of those notions that my father had some sort of natural malicious intent was a rebirth of my adolescent perspective that allowed me to get to this point in my life that I am finally comfortable talking about the fact I was affected by it and still deal with ongoing ramifications. Speaking to my father became easier because I washed away any prior preconceptions and was able to talk to him as a person. 

His arrest also gave me cause to critically assess the criminal justice system and its effects on families; it stoked my love for advocacy and inspired me to fight for a more equitable and humane system. Being present when my father was arrested was a horrible event that deeply damaged my confidence in the police. It gave me the feeling that individuals in positions of authority may misuse them, and this mistrust permeated the entire court system. I educated myself, as a result of this, on the misconduct in criminal justice matters in the United States, and it was an extensive list. I felt shameful to understand that the country I was so blindly boasting about was systematically repressing people who look like me in a multitude of different facets of life. It was sickening, but I also came to the realization that I can strive for better and advocate so situations like this can be stopped. 

The police detaining my father was a profoundly life-changing event that had an impact on many facets of my life, it shattered my chance at a close father son bond, reinforced negative preconceptions, and sowed the seeds of a lifelong distrust of authority. My desire for a better American legal system, more specifically one that is without laws or legal systems that hold strong personal biases. State incarceration statistics show it is an obvious issue that black neighborhoods are being overly policed but under-protected. Whether it be George Floyd, Emmett Till, or Trayvon Martin, there have been too many instances for the relationship between police and African Americans to be a positive one with serious reworkings.

Go out and make sure your voice is heard by local officials; every voice matters.

Taurean Jewett II is a freshman English major at Holy Family University. Their interests include poetry, fashion & music.