When I first faced police officers, I was 18 years old, and I had been in a serious car accident from a salesman texting while driving. I was waiting for the light to turn so I could safely make a left turn. I was not expecting the car to come at me out of nowhere when the light had just turn red. Immediately on impact, my car spun three hundred sixty degrees around (a perfect circle) and got shifted over to the opposite side of the road in the midst of a frenzied tailspin.

I will never forget how I blacked out and prayed that some miracle would save me.

A flashing light took over the darkness and my eyes immediately opened, and I screamed in panic for help. A kind stranger stopped and helped. My side door somehow opened.

I shook in terror.

I didn’t even know what happened; just that I experienced what later would be called PTSD.

The officer responding looked at my car, its frame completely totaled and windshield so shattered that I am baffled that, even to this day, I was not full of glass shards stuck to my skin.

The officer made a thrilling discovery: “Your car is facing the wrong way in the lane.”

Mind you, there were tire marks from my car. As well, the other car was stopped only from hitting a solid metal sign post. The damage?

The other car got off with maybe some paint damage, a broken side mirror, and a dented door on the side matching mine. Additionally the other driver threw an award winning performance that the injuries sustained required an ambulance.

Even more exhilarating was the officer’s conclusion: “This clearly shows you were the one at fault. There’s no other explanation for why your car was totaled on the wrong way of traffic.”

Now, in case you’re curious, no, even physics would disagree with the conclusion. A car damaged that critically couldn’t have been the cause. The point of impact was thoroughly facing the incorrect side of the road to even claim this.

Then again, perhaps there was suspicion I was performing witchcraft and thus I was able to transform the laws of physics in an effort to frame a distracted salesman. Perhaps police learned in training, even then, that young teenage girls on their way to the gym drive recklessly while listening to a combination of both Christian worship and country music.

Perhaps I bent scientific principles.

Speeding toward me clearly means I was in the wrong of this. No one accidentally speeds. They always speed at targets.

Maybe women really are that powerful. I don’t really know how I was assumed to have destroyed years of physics research or why it bothers me that I accepted a ticket I didn’t rightfully earn.

But also, the other driver sued me.

I have therefore joined the club of people who have been sued for dumb reasons and stupid amounts.

A (pitifully written) lawsuit for one hundred thousand was delivered to my door. It was received by my mother, who had a damn near heart attack upon seeing a police officer at her door. Covertly I think this was the point: scare the female defendant with brute force to follow raging stupidity.

Now to be clear: the suit was settled for something like ten thousand and legal fees. My insurance company was so appalled at the lawsuit even being served that they were adamant to not raise my rates from it. Some insurance adjuster basically looked at the case and agreed that even though I took fault (which I stand firm was fine, since I was terrified of a courtroom), there was no way that was either my doing or my inherent driving style.

At least someone has a brain.

So what do we do now?

We consider that a traumatized woman always gets blamed. Even though there was so much showing I wasn’t at fault, common legal consensus is that mentally ill people (and women in particular) are violent, unstable, or even dangerous in general.

Why do I know this?

Considering my dramatic post of this need no further comment, I offer up another tale.

When I was in college, I took a screenwriting course for my film and media studies minor. It eventually came time in the semester to begin workshopping our short film screenplay. This meant first creating a general outline with mostly just plot points and relevant characters.

This girl (call her “Cindy”) in the class was so proud.

“My dad’s a police officer and he helped me write a crime drama. It’s about a murderer with schizophrenia.”

I withheld my comments until the end. I figured this could be her attempt at making things right. I was outspoken about my mental health and it was known in the class that I would call you out for saying something really wrong.

Cindy continued: “We find out that the murderer’s diagnosis is violent and caused the deaths to be much more severe than if he weren’t crazy.”

Now I know that was blatantly paraphrased, but consider that was years ago, and the point still stood the same. Lipstick on a pig doesn’t mean the pig won’t become bacon.

In other news, gently sneaking in statements used in violence against mental illness are still harmful, even if they’re more hidden. I’d even argue that hidden comments (sometimes micro aggressions) are more damaging in how protective and defensive people get in being called out.

Cindy got brutally murdered in my response.

It was something along the lines of: “Just so you know, mentally ill people are actually more likely to be the victims of violence than perpetrators of it. And when they do, they are no more likely to have been violent than a neurotypical person. Violence isn’t linked to mental health, and to write a screenplay where it is, is to discredit the work being done to stop these falsehoods being spread by people who want to criminalize mental illness.”

To be honest, Cindy began bursting into tears, and I stopped my passionate monologue in favor of the professor’s urging that it was enough. I at least listen to when to stop. But I did feel guilty for hurting her so badly, even though those were my feelings and I had the right to feel them.

I think sometimes people forget that even their neighbor has a severe mental illness, and that no amount of blaming them will help.

Yet again, systemic oppression only works if oppressors can find a group to blame for various villainy they themselves actually perpetrate most.

To hold violence accountable to the person and their values is to discredit oppression stating that anyone with an imperfection deserves violence and should be denied any help.

Does this appear elsewhere?

Violence against mental health disorders begins in healthcare, most often. If you ever are so unfortunate as to need the emergency room, lord have mercy on your soul if you also take psychiatric medication. I wish you well.

I had MRSA (a horribly invasive infection) that was dismissed as folliculitis (essentially skin picking) since I stupidly declared I take medication for anxiety and depression.

Having a mental health condition didn’t actually make my pain less real. Instead, the moment I mentioned my diagnosis, the doctor’s eyes immediately glazed over, determining for me that I was actually scratching my leg in a panic attack and thus was overreacting to not being able to comfortably walk on my leg.

Let me be clear.

Even IF that were true, I deserved to be treated respectfully and in presented with treatment rather than dismissed in judgement.

The medical system often fails those of us who trust it to stand behind us.

Likewise, if you have disordered eating but don’t meet BMI for weight loss issues, you’re more likely to be praised than helped. Yes, we in America will pause eating disorders that happen to otherwise overweight or obese individuals.

Medical discrimination sucks.

But oppressive systems hope to follow.

Abolish or Bust

I’m a proponent of abolishing and defunding police departments locally, nationally, and sometimes as much as globally. Discrimination in policing is internationally known to exist.

Most people fighting against this are communities who benefit from (or are unaffected by) brutality and excessive force applied unequally. If you’re not the one fearing being falsely accused by the police themselves through exaggerated reports, then sure, it almost makes sense that you don’t care.

But if you are a mentally ill human who has been abused by anyone in your life, it’s in your best interest to be on the side of abolishing police.

Police have no ethical standards.

They can act however they want to whomever they want, and the courts fight to protect them and basically can win no matter what.

The police will listen to men that say a woman is responsible for his violence (also not a thing) while telling a woman her mental illness is violent (likely just as false). I don’t think that men can’t be abused by women. But I do think police are much happier to accuse women for abuse that they’d never call abuse for a man, given the same circumstances.

Police let men use depression to get out of admitting to strangling a woman. He got to argue that he didn’t know what was going on enough so his confession couldn’t count.

Police don’t admit women in a psychotic break from a PTSD panic attack are victims of police brutality and abuse. Apparently that puts women in a position to confess coherently, though.

There’s a power imbalance.

Both are wrong. That’s true.

But I’ve lived both stories.

And let me tell you, I’m not sure that under policing is as wrong as over policing.

Letting mental health issues allow men to excuse themselves for actual abuse and telling women that their mental health isn’t means that we’ve allowed police to take up abusive behavior and that courts are allowed to defend it.

All I mean is, if some guy was too sad to know better than to not strangle me, why isn’t psychosis a reasonable excuse for not knowing what I’m saying, either?

Police don’t care about women.

They want to help men who abuse women.

They know that a woman saying “I have PTSD from being through severe domestic violence” means they get to respond by being abusive, because they know that no court of law cares about survivors.

Police are trained to hate women.

They are trained to tell women that they must be making up things based on how they say things, because apparently being freaked out demeans the words you are demanded to say.

Police victim blame and are told that’s safer and better because “it’ll show the victim how bad things have gotten.” When the truth is, it would (and does) give the victim less power and less ability to leave. They don’t understand domestic violence at all, and they still think they are helping victims of it.

When the victim gets police help, the police often support the abuser to the extent to which they don’t even record a statement from the victim (if they are daring to ask for one).

When police victim blame, they will make up statements left and right, and even falsify evidence in their police reports just to make sure they don’t make a fool of themselves.

The thing is, police only get credit for successful convictions.

They know the tricks to not lose.

They are nasty and cowards.

Helping victims would mean listening to them, in any situation of victimization. But police are so willing to victim blame. They need to be taken down. They are harming our society.

They taunt victims and ask them to rush along their story because they don’t care; they don’t care about anyone but themselves.

They lie to you and then pretend they care.

That’s deceptive, even evil.

Evil people aren’t the good guys.

But still we trust them as a nation.

Why trust people who harm us?

I certainly wouldn’t.

Abolish them and fund programs that actually care about people. Programs that actually want to help others and aren’t so self righteous and evil that they’d rather be wrong and defend it than do right and have ethics to fall back on.

XOXO,

Dorothy B