Helped me stand up for a cause that benefits the human race. Over the course of my life, I’ve been targeted, profiled, harassed, and faced malicious prosecution.
I guess this was my first true experience with police counter-surveillance, stalking, unlawful stakeouts, and tailing a potential “suspect” home or wherever I went. Started in 2017, I began to have heightened awareness and feel mental and emotional discomfort as a result of multiple encounters with Chicago Police on the north side. For no obvious reason. Perhaps it was because I had recently entered the homeless community at the age of 21 and was now on a list of persons who were being followed and harassed by residents in the neighborhood. I had no troubles until I was repeatedly pulled over, stopped, unjustly held, searched, and questioned by police for no apparent cause.
Most of my attempts to calmly speak with police never turned out well and I usually ended up in handcuffs. And arrested on trivial charges, which were later dismissed. There was disproportionate force from several police agencies. I even wrote a complaint to Civilian Office of Police Accountability. After my third arrest, I noticed a pattern within the CPD community, which began with traffic stops, citations, parking or red light violations, and property seizures. Now I’m just 30 years old, and I’ve been dealing with the police since I was 8 years old, being questioned as a kid because of crimes my family members did, etc.
However, in 2017, things did not feel that much different from the early 1930s, segregation and racial discrimination were tolerated. I landed on the police radar because some crooked cop, somewhere, decided to prejudge me without questioning the facts, and their own selfishness their ego, the need to always fell like their in charge.
Now that I’ve accepted responsibility for my involvement in this, I’m cursing them out whenever they approach me. I never threatened, raised my hand, or pointed a finger at them; I simply profiled and made up horrible shit to say to them in order to see if any of them felt any guilt for what they were putting me through. Most don’t. It wasn’t until I was evicted from my third apartment in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood. I recognized the cops were conducting unlawful surveillance on me and engaging in several counter-surveillance activities. I was working for Wrigley Field at the time and drove from the west to the north side for my shifts, parking just in front of my living room window so I could keep an eye on my vehicle.
One morning I come out, headed to work, when I noticed I had a ticket, from a red light camera on my car, now I thought this was odd, because those tickets usually came in the mail. And I was rushing, so I didn’t give it much thought. Later that day, I discovered that officers had access to my mailbox and would repeatedly steal or check my mail, as well as remove that red light ticket from my mailbox and position it on top of my car to signal that they were watching.
When I got to work, I parked near Kenmore and Waveland. I had bought my 383 sticker the day before and put it in the window, but to my surprise, the police officer at that post this morning had a different agenda. He didn’t care that I had left my cub’s security shirt visible in the front seat, that the sticker was correctly placed in the window, or that I had said “how are you,” walked right past him, and entered the gates of Wrigley Field. However, I got a large ticket when I returned from my shift, and I was furious.
I went home and prepared for the next day, still haven’t paid rent and was about to be targeted, once again, in illegal operation by Chicago police, state troopers and sheriff’s. I went to sleep, woke up the next morning, only to find my red two door accura had been booted and ticketed by the city of Chicago finance. I called immediately, they told me to pay some ridiculous balance, in 24hrs that I couldn’t afford, went to work and came back, next day they took my car, and sold it in auction.
The original owner of this car received multiple monopolized red light tickets from the department of finance, she later sued. Idk what happen after that.
A week later, the sheriffs broke down my door while I wasn’t home, replaced the locks, and put a large sticker with my address, phone number, and other personal information on it.
The day prior, I moved out and left. However, my experience with police harassment didn’t end there!
JAI ON EARTH Discovering Our Planet 