Ride-along reflections

Spiritual Life, Spring 2002 by Matthews, Carolyn

ONE EVENING LAST SUMMER, I rode along on a four-to-- midnight shift with a Baltimore city police sergeant. Sergeant Rick Piel is a friend of mine whom I met in a class at the Ecumenical Institute, St. Mary's Seminary and University. I asked him to take me along on his rounds through the city for a reality check. Every so often I find myself frustrated by the easy, middle-class faith with which I have grown so comfortable, and I look for some way to step out and experience something of the world beyond my suburban bubble. My fear is that studies at the seminary threaten to keep me in an academic, theoretical faith as I read and study about ministry without really participating in it.

In the past, this urge has led me to prison ministry and to short work/mission trips to Haiti. I have daydreamed about becoming a lay missionary, but the reality of caring for my own home and family dashes that idea in a hurry. This time, when I felt called by restlessness, I decided to look for something closer to home. Perhaps working in a shelter or soup kitchen in the city would be the handson work I needed. Going along on a police shift would give me an honest (and reasonably safe) look at the neighborhoods most in need, I reasoned.

What I found during my four hours in Baltimore's Eastern District surprised and frightened me. My first impression was the shock of the district's physical ugliness. I could not believe that people live in these rows of boarded-up, falling-apart houses just steps away from Johns Hopkins Hospital. The painful struggles that plague every person are laid bare in these streets instead of being nicely tucked away behind closed suburban doors. Whole blocks have been bulldozed, leaving mountains of rubble behind. Graffiti messages on brick walls catalog the "rest in peace" count, providing gruesome urban monuments to the many homicides. Crowds of people lingered in front of each corner liquor store but moved along slowly at the sight of a police cruiser approaching.

The look in their eyes was familiar to me. I recognized it as the same look of hopeless boredom and resignation that haunted me in Haiti. An adolescent girl leaned on a second-story windowsill, watching her world outside. I, too, grew up in a Baltimore block of rowhomes and back alleys, but this world of broken glass; scattered trash; and aimless, wandering people had not been part of my neighborhood scenery. What memories will this young woman carry, and into what sort of future will they lead her?

All of these sights, though, paled in comparison to the feelings that I found in myself. As someone who claims to be pro-life, it terrified me to discover how quickly I could adopt the "us and them" attitude that divides the poor from the rest of the world. I would argue against the death penalty any day, but the knowledge that one of the drug buyers on the street could be dead by the end of the night left me apathetic. It was too easy to see the addicts and dealers and alcoholics as somehow less than human. How much would I protest to a new Hitler if he could only make them all go away and let the decent people live in peace? Would I question where they had gone or simply rejoice at the urban renewal that could result? After all, they have made their beds-or graves-and can now lie in them.

Besides the lack of compassion, I had to look at the fact that I found myself disappointed by the lack of activity on that night's shift. Rather than rejoice that no one had been injured or arrested, I was hoping that we would come upon a crime in progress so I could see police work in action. It was a letdown that I had missed a shooting that had happened about an hour before I met Rick at the station. This too is a frightening, macabre attitude. Where does it originate? Is crime just so far removed from my life that it is a spectator sport instead of a hurting, sinful reality? Behind the headlines and the flashing lights of the emergency equipment, there are people who are injured, families who are mourning, and community members who are terrorized. Still, my involvement is limited to hearing the reports of violence on the news and wishing that someone would do something about it.

I saw the bleak neighborhoods from the relative safety of a police car, sitting next to an armed officer that I trusted to protect me. I was not afraid. We ate at a local Burger King and got coffee at a 7-Eleven where the owners were more than happy to serve us. We were the good guys. I could smugly watch the bad guys scatter at our approach as Rick pointed out people, saying, "Heroin buyer there; he's up to something there; I'll keep an eye on this kid in the jacket; these guys don't need to be standing around...." What would it be like, on my own and unprotected, in the midst of these people? Would I be welcoming and willing to see Christ there? Hardly. I would move along quickly with my eyes down, knowing that I stand out as an easy target. What does it say about my professed faith in the Eucharist that I exclude these people from the Body of Christ so easily?