Letter to Atlanta City Council District 5
Good afternoon,
My name is Dale Jakes, I live in your district, and the last few weeks I've had to spend every single waking moment grappling with the fear of the police that has been instilled in me since I was old enough to understand the news. My mother is worried regularly about my well being, because we have an arm of the state that is allowed to do whatever it wants to me. There's no accountability, and every single one of my paychecks pays for it.
I don't want to pay people to scare my mother.
It's hard for me to recount every single time I've been stopped by a police officer while minding my own business, but I would like to share one of those times with you.
Every day I go to work, I'm working within a hundred feet of the spot I was questioned for, I guess, looking out of place in the middle of the day. I remember that afternoon so clearly. I had decided to treat myself to a bahn mi. The sun was out. I was on a walk I've made at least a dozen times. I had to take my earbuds out, because I couldn't hear the officer clearly, their car was stopped in the middle of Moreland, two lanes away from me just before Ormewood "do you live around here?" They hauled the SUV across those last two lanes, "do you live around here?"
There aren't a lot of times I'm lucky that I'm not scared in my life often, but this day I was out of my mind with fear. I patted myself down mentally. Is the Swiss army knife on my keys the thing that gets me killed in broad daylight? Am I getting dragged away with ginger candies in my pocket? Why didn't I just drive today?
I never found out what they wanted. I never found out what was so pressing they needed to shout across two lanes of traffic. They didn't even want to see my license, but I remember being terrified to even offer it as a way to prove I was taking a stroll in a place I belonged. They didn't care what I was doing. I'm positive they don't even remember me, but it's been years and to this day I'm still trying to figure out what I did wrong. I'm sure maybe I fit some vague description.
I've fit so many descriptions. Every time a campus alert went out to all of the GSU students I would go through a ritual of checking to make sure I wasn't wearing the same color shirt as the person they were looking for, it was typically the only thing distinguishing me from “ a black male, about average height, dark skin, short hair.”
Please don't give these people any more of my money. I'm sick of being scared of what happens if I don't deactivate the alarm at work in time, and the police "check in" on me. I'm sick of reaching for my phone seeing these men and women killed, and wondering if I'm next. I don't want to know whether or not I'd call out for my mom when there's a knee on my neck. We can do so much more with this money, and I don't want to keep handing it to someone that's going to ruin the taste of my sandwich or shoot me in the back.
Thank you for your time,
