cuffs

I spent the last hour watching two young guys be detained in handcuffs by the cops. I listened to what they were saying, one kid was 17, and only a sophomore in high school. The cop kind of scoffed at him because of this. There ended up being 6 cops, and two kids pressed up against the fence that separates my house from the sidewalk and street in front. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I cried because the older of the two looked too comfortable, he kind of chuckled with the cops, this wasnt his first time in cuffs. When the last car arrived, he recognized one of the cops, he had been in jail for 3 days recently because of a warrant. I don't know the details, but I cried because when the younger one's mother showed up to get him, she didn't. She wasn't surprised. I thought about a life lived watching friends, neighbors, peers being arrested on the street though the bars of your bedroom window. I wondered how many others in my neighborhood were watching from hidden corners. I felt like I was keeping watch, I don't know for what, for proper police procedure. The kids probably did something wrong, something involving stolen bikes maybe, a car? I couldn't figure it out. But it upset me to watch them, an hour later an officer was throwing something on the ground across the street, some kind of bike wrench. The mom had to walk across the street and pick it up off the ground, then take her son to her car as he tried to conspicuously rub his wrists. I saw him rubbing his wrist and tried to find the herschel quote about always being surprised. I'm happy to remind myself that I could never be apathetic, but I don't know what a moment like this means for me, for my future, for where my life is going. I don't want young latino kids comfortable in handcuffs, comfortable as 17 year old sophomores. I was 14 when I was a sophomore.