Letters

Published: Thursday, March 18, 1999

Letters

Minority hassled by campus officers

It isn't news anymore that UCLA was on the news the night of March 4, when an attempted rapist-intruder, allegedly a black man, was on the rampage in Westwood.

Before this I had been randomly stopped and harassed by campus police. The most annoying occasion occurred on a frat party night. The streets were filled with people, and the police gave me a hard time for entering my own garden.

The police being racist is nothing new; they relish stopping blacks. With this thing in the air now, mark my words, they are going to have a field day harassing innocent students in Westwood.

On March 3, around 2:20 a.m, I got a call from my girlfriend. The distress in her voice got me wide awake in seconds. She asked me whether I had been around. "No," I said. Apparently an intruder had attempted to break into her apartment. The intruder tried to push his way into the apartment, but one of her roommates, who was up studying late, wrestled the door shut.

Prior to that, she heard the sound of someone attempting to come in through the window and thought that she had imagined it. She heard the noise twice and turned up the TV so that it was really loud. Apparently the noise scared the intruder away, but obviously not well enough.

Just before they called the police, my girlfriend's roommates asked her if she had invited me over and left the door open for me. She hadn't, not at 2:20 in the morning! They urged her to call me, just to verify that I hadn't been around. All four girls were scared, so I offered to come over and sleep in the living room if it would make them feel better. I went to sleep and thought nothing else of it - until the following night.

On March 4, I called my girlfriend. While we were talking on the phone, UCLA appeared on the news. Apparently five other people had similar experiences in the vicinity.

My girlfriend said she was tired and scared at the same time. So I asked her if she wanted to come over. She said she would love to but was scared to come by herself. I would come and get her, I told her, since it's a two-minute walk.

So I'm walking down her road when a police car pulls up beside me and shines a blinding light in my face. I was not pleased, and I let them know it.

I got my girlfriend and we headed out. Again, we had barely taken 10 paces out of her apartment when we had another incident with another unmarked car. I thought the fact that my girlfriend was escorting me (who was escorting who?) would have "validated" me as non suspect.

But no, I'm still black.

Another 30 paces and yet a different unmarked car gave me some grief. The place was crawling with them! Three incidents occurred in under 10 minutes.

I thought the police back home in London were bad. They make you want to apologize for being African British. Don't drive a nice car if you're black; they'll pull you over.

Jeepers, in Westwood all you've got to do is walk alone! I wear my hair in braids; the suspect is described as having short hair or a shaven head. I'm 6 feet 3 inches tall; the suspect is at most 5 feet 10 inches tall. He has nothing in common with me except that I'm black. So why are they stopping my black behind?

Police, do your jobs - make Westwood safe for us, but protect me, don't persecute me.

Donte D. Dollar-Wright II

Third-year graduate student

UCLA School of Film

Police aren't racist for doing their job

I feel forced to reply to the most ignorant, selfish and heartless letter ever written - Foluke Olayele's opinion ("Vague description reveals racism" Viewpoint, March 15) that the police are acting racist by trying to catch the black man who so cruelly attacked females near UCLA and attempted break-ins in five other residences the same night.

Olayele, how can someone have the nerve to declare racism because the police are trying to stop a proven criminal from severely damaging more innocent lives? No one got a good description of him before because no one saw him clearly! Now there is a composite sketch, which anyone knows is drawn according to the reports of a witness!

The only thing the police did wrong was not having a cop on every single corner after getting two calls within an hour for attempted breaking and entering by a man with the same description. How could they let that slide until six places were hit? With a little more intelligence and compassion on the force, they might have been able to prevent the worst attack from occurring and possibly stopped this evil prowler.

When a random man breaks into a house and proceeds to severely beat a harmless young woman without any reason whatsoever, you had better believe there ought to be a $25,000 dollar reward out there. These are the people that ruin humanity, that destroy trust and safety in a community that once felt wonderful to its inhabitants.

Now all my female friends can't even walk home alone at night; some refuse to even be at home without a friend there - as if simply being terrified wasn't enough.

Olayele decided to try to raise the issue of racism out of the blue, as if we should let the man run free because, although he was seen and was clearly black, we don't want to start any controversy.

Now that's just ignorant.

At this point, the only things that should be focused on are increasing safety, stopping the criminal and helping the young women who have had to suffer the most through this unexplainable tragedy. We need support now, not more attacks. My heart is with the victims.

I have more anger toward this letter writer than the attacker himself. That man was clearly intensely disturbed; life could not possibly have been good to him. Yet the last thing we need is someone telling people that "the students feel there was racism involved," an idea that is entirely ridiculous and false.

The students I know here are all grief stricken that such a vicious assault could happen, and did happen, in our own community - the place we have chosen to live.

If you want to be someone in life, talk about something that really matters, something with meaning and virtue. Forget this played-out racism topic and stop applying it to everything you can think of. It's that kind of an attitude that maintains racism, and the media is greatly responsible.

Shame on the Daily Bruin for printing such worthless, pompous, ignorant garbage.

Aaron Blocher-Rubin

Third-year

Psychology