Do I make you nervous?

The afternoon of the 28^th, I found myself trying to get home via the bus lines from The Outlets at Bergen Town Center in Paramus, N.J. (I normally ride NJ Transit trains but due to weekend track work through mid August on the Pascack Valley Line, there were no trains running. Thus I was forced to ride bus lines of which I was not familiar.)

I left the mall, I came to the bus stop area and looked for a posted schedule of times and bus lines. There was none. I looked for the text number/mobile update sign and there was none posted there either. About 3:25 p.m., a bus pulled up (Bus No. 7583, NJ License Plate OXZ7010) and parked about 30 feet from the covered shelter. I got up and walked over to the bus of which the driver was still sitting but the doors were closed.

I knocked on the closed doors and said “excuse me.”

The driver was filling out a white envelope with the NJ Transit logo on it. She never looked up or even acknowledged me. I said “excuse me” again and told the driver that I just had a quick question about the bus and its destination stops etc. This time she waved her hand at me dismissively and still never opened the door nor even looked at me.

I thought maybe she was motioning me to go look at a schedule somewhere. I walked away, looked around the shelter again and still saw nothing. I walked back to the bus and knocked on the door glass again. I told the driver “there was no schedule posted anywhere and could she please just help me with one question”. She ignored me again, then got up out of her driver’s seat and walked to the back of the bus.

I then told her that I was going to file a complaint with the NJ Transit main office because of her attitude.

I pulled out my smart phone and snapped pictures of the side of the bus and the front of the bus to get the license and bus number. (The pictures are time dated 3:36 p.m.)

I then went back to the shelter and sat down. Another woman was waiting there and witnessed the entire incident. I explained to this woman how I was trying to ask the driver a question and was totally ignored. The woman told me that drivers on this route are often rude and shook her head.

At 3:47 p.m. another bus – that said OUT of SERVICE - pulled up (Bus Number 7856) and I knocked on the window and told the driver I had a question, he opened the door, listened to my question and then I told him what had just happened. He said that the first bus was probably the one I needed to board and that he was going out of service and to be sure to file a complaint against the first driver.

The first bus was still parked, had her sign off and door closed.

I left the bus waiting area and I walked over to the CVS pharmacy across the street to use the restroom and when I came back, the first bus had pulled up to the shelter, had turned her destination sign on (168 New York) and had let the one woman waiting, and several other passengers, on the bus.

I ran back across the street and came up to the bus and waited for her to open the door. I knocked again and she just sat there in her seat ignoring me. I sat back down in the shelter and was resigned for her to pull off and wait for the next bus. It’s now about 3:54 p.m.

At 3:57 p.m., two squad cars from the Paramus Police Department sped up to the scene and out jumped three officers. I then realized that she had called the police on me.

One of the went over to her driver’s side window and started talking to the driver as the other two stood about 10 yards away from me, just staring me down. I just sat and didn’t say anything.

About 4:05, Paramus Police Officer Dmitiriy Mazur (I believed he was the officer that was doing all the talking; the other officers' names were Anthony Mordaga and Michael Ditolla) approached me.

Mazur: "What's your name and where are you going?"

Me: "My name is Alonza Robertson and I'm trying to catch the bus to Chestnut Ridge N.Y."

Mazur: "What's going on here?"

Me: "I was trying to find out if this bus is the one I need to take to Hackensack or Oradell, that will allow me to catch another bus that goes to Westwood or the one that takes the Pasack Valley train route. All the trains are not running on the weekends because of track work. I'm not familar with these buses, or bus lines, and I just wanted to ask this driver a question about which direction she's going."

Mazur: "She's nervous and doesn't want you on the bus."

Me: " You got to be kidding me? Sir...I wasn't even sure if she was the right bus for me to catch. I knocked on her window to ask her but she didn't open the door and just waved me off. I knocked again and she just got up out of her seat, walked to the back of the bus and ignored me."

Mazur: "She doesn't understand why you are taking pictures?"

Me: "Sir, I told her through the door that I was going to file a complaint with N.J. Transit because of how rude she was to me and I'd told her I just wanted to ask a quick question. I took two pictures, one of the front of the bus to get the bus number and license plate number and the other one of her standing in the middle of the bus ignoring me after I knocked on the closed doors."

He walked away, went back over to the driver and then came back again about two minutes later with a bus schedule in his hand.

Mazur: "You can't get on this bus, You can get on the next bus. We don't want to make a record of you."

Me: "Why would you make a record of me?" I haven't done anything wrong."

Mazur: "She's nervous of you."

Me: "She's on the bus, with the doors locked. Why didn't she just drive off then instead of calling the police?"

Mazur: "You can't get on the bus."

Me: "With all that's going on in the national news now, she's nervous of me, why? She won't even acknowledge me. When I had walked away for a few minutes to find a bathroom, she let everybody else she let on the bus before I walked back over her. And she still wouldn't open the door. What would any reasonable person deduce from that? You and I both know the real reason she's nervous and she called the police. It's because I'm black and I was going to complain about her.

Mazur: "It's not that, it's not that."

Me: "Then what other reasonable reason could it be?"

None of the officers said anything. One just looked down at the ground. Mazur handed me the schedule.

Mazur: "You can't get on the bus."

And then they turned around, got in their cars and drove off. The bus, and all the other passengers, pulled off. And I was left sitting there, in the 85-degree heat, feeling painfully disenfranchised.

It is my contention that the driver let the other people on and then stayed at the bus stop and called the police because she wanted to cover herself, and try to get me (a scary black man?) in trouble or at least humiliate me by placing her 911 call.

The police did investigate and concluded I had done nothing wrong – I was not warned, cited nor arrested (Paramus Police Department Incident #1-2013-029908). BUT, I still wasn’t going to be allowed on the bus. They were enforcing her subjectivity too. I asked them why and they said because I make her “nervous.”

If I had been anyone else of any other race, the police would have let me board the bus after they determined the 911 dispute was really about a driver looking to retaliate against me because I intended to file a complaint. They didn’t allow me to ride, even in the back of the bus.

The end story is the bus drove away, I was made a spectacle of and I had to wait another hour for another bus, then missed a connection to my house and ended up waiting in the rain for another hour in Hackensack and just gave up and spent $45 for a cab home to Chestnut Ridge, N.Y.

I visited the NJ Transit website and their slogan says there mission is to provide safe, reliable and convenient service. I didn’t get any of that on July 28.  They also say that “NJ TRANSIT is committed to ensuring that no person isexcluded from participation in or denied the benefits of its services on the basis of race, color or national origin, as provided by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

I was denied that public accommodation.

Others were allowed on the bus, but I was denied because I told her that I was planned to file a complaint. Thus her act - of refusing to answer my question, intentionally denying me entry on the bus and calling the police and making a false claim against me - was in retaliation. That is against the law too.

Afraid of that Book Cover?

I penguin shuffled out of Theater No. 4 at the Angelika Film Center Friday night, my eyes focused on no particular spot on the carpet as the exit line moved in hushed tones. A bow-tied usher, propped up near the concessions, peered at the faces of those who’d just seen “Fruitvale Station.”

 “It looks like that was a serious movie, “he dutifully announced.

I ignored him and kept walking, wrestling with my own emotions and shaking my head. Almost reaching the up escalators, I stopped and turned my face away from the crowd lining up for the next showing. My eyes welled up and I wept.

“Fruitvale Station” is one movie you are going to hear a lot about because it is a movie you will see and then feel a lot about.

It’s an unspoken fact of life that all humans are pre-programmed to make snap judgments  - sizing people up, profiling each other  - based on class: where you live, how you dress, the manner of your speech, the type of work you do, the type of car you drive; gender: if you pee standing up or sitting down;  orientation; who you prefer to spend your private time with; age: how wrinkled is your skin or how gray is your hair; and from what neighborhood, race, or religion do you come?

All people do it. Some people more than others. Others do it and allow it to influence their behavior; some suppress it and try to give unfamiliar individuals the opportunity to be just that: a unique individual.

In Ryan Coogler’s controversial true story about Oakland resident Oscar Grant, we accompany him on a cinematic reenactment of the last 24 hours of Grant’s life. We make no snap judgments but complex and layered ones; we learn he is a doting father, a son, a grandson, a nephew, a friend to friends, strangers and animals. He also has been to prison, has sold and smoked marijuana, and he has unresolved and gnawing angst about how to make his family’s future more stable.  He’s struggling to not be pushed any closer to the edge.

And just like how Spike Lee portrayed Brooklyn in “Do the Right Thing”, and how Albert Hughes portrayed South Central LA in “Menace II Society”, Coogler grittily captures the stores, the music, the streets of East Oakland and the omnipotent BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train that sleekly rumbles across The Town, that’s what locals call Oakland, a reference to Oaktown.

Oakland is seven miles east of San Francisco (The City) via the Bay Bridge or a quick ride through the underwater train bubble on BART.  This part of Northern California is called God’s Country because of the beautiful scenery, no humidity summers,  the mountains, hills, oceans, bays, the Redwood trees, vineyards etc. one of the most beautiful places on Earth.  I feel in love with this area when I first visited in the summer of 1989 and later lived there three different times since college.

Many know that Oakland, it’s hills, and nearby coast towns of Alameda, Berkeley, San Leandro , Richmond and Hayward all have better weather and  views than much of San Francisco, which is often cold and foggy. But people stay away. They don’t visit Oakland much because they are afraid of its reputation for gangs, gun violence and “scary’ black people. 

But I grew fond of the East Bay. I lived near Lake Merritt in Oakland not far from the real Fruitvale Station in the racially-diverse Fruitvale part of town. I enjoyed the ‘healthy” food, the festive people; the fun of being in cool California; the dread of earthquakes and forest fires but the joy of living and appreciating the environment.

Every Sunday morning (10 a.m. is kickoff time on the West Coast) for years, I watched the NFL games at the Golden Bear sports bar with guys just like Oscar Grant. I’ve laughed and cussed the screens and even bet against “him and Da Raiders” when my Tampa Bay Bucs faced them in Super Bowl XXXVII. I helped coached a Pee Wee football team of 25 black, Latin and Asian boys who all resembled Oscar – and his environment -  when he was probably 11 or 12 years old. I cheered their successes and helped try to mentor when their mothers got overwhelmed.

But I also was constantly aware of Oakland’s underlying gun violence problem that seemed to crash in - sometimes randomly, sometimes not - at any time, at any place:  political assassinations of news reporters on downtown sidewalks, corner street store owners blasting disrespectful customers or even police officers killing innocent unarmed people, like what the BART police did to Oscar Grant.

I was not emotional Friday night because of how the movie “Fruitvale Station” ended; I felt it because I intimately knew the place the film depicted and I felt I personally knew that young man. He had promise, he had hope, his life had value.

And I know a lot more of them; they look like my nephews Michael in Orlando, Chris and Ben in Morristown; and my friends’ teenage boys in Dallas, D.C. and Atlanta;  and the other hundreds of young men I see every day on the streets of the Bronx, Harlem, Brooklyn and Queens.

Or like the one in a hoodie we all learned about last year who died in Sanford, Florida: Trayvon Martin. As that murder trial jury now continues to deliberate George Zimmerman’s fate, the comment pages and posts on social media sites are spewing with venom: “that boy was TRASH” “Zimmerass is a punk loser”, “Trayvon deserved it” etc. etc.

There were plenty of observers, pundits and other “keyboard cowboys” that said all the same things in 2009 about Oscar Grant when he was killed and about the officer that pulled the trigger. (I ask you to closely watch the one scene of humanity and dignity between the two of them at the end of the Fruitvale movie; once both realized the preciousness of life.)  

In the Grant incident, a city’s consciousness was outraged. One man died and one man did go to jail for 11 months. But what did we learn from that? What has really changed about handguns, police tactics with unarmed people, with how we value life, or how we profile each other?

I was reminded then, and now with the Martin incident, that you can’t always judge – or be afraid of - a book by its cover.  That little saying is known and said by all of us. What’s sad though is too many people still don’t even bother to open the book and look at any of the pages.

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