Equal Protection Under the Law-

a modern day parable

by Preston Peet-
for the July, 2002 issue of
the New York Waste

June 24, 2002

Thomas sits on the hard wood bench surrounded by piles of steaming, stinking shit in Tompkins Square at 10th and Ave. A. It’s impossible to tell if it’s human or other, but it sure as hell doesn’t slow him down.

Ave. A and Tompkins Square at St. Mark's Place

Middle of the hot summer afternoon in NYC, it has taken Thomas hours to scam up enough money to score both coke and dope. His morning third of a bag wakeup shot has long worn off, leaving him feeling drained and sore, ready to throw up on his shoes if he doesn’t get another shot into himself quickly. The afternoon inline skating hockey game hasn’t begun, and there’s no annoying groups of kids playing baseball, so there shouldn’t be any trouble.

He whips out his accoutrements and quickly mixes up a big fat 40 mil shot, stirring in a bag of each drug, sucking up the greasy yellow liquid into his rig. It takes just seconds for him to deftly register the vein he’s been hitting the last few days now, on the right side of his left wrist. It’s a perfect vein that he doesn’t even have to tie off to hit, making it easy to bang no matter his locale, unlike his preferred spot in the elbow.

Thomas doing his thing on
a better day

Sick as Thomas is in this overwhelming heat, when the drugs kick in he forgets where he is for a few moments, neglecting to put away his equipment. The drugs are stashed, but the cap, water bottle and rig are all sitting in his lap under a piece of newspaper he used to shield the view of any curious passersby.

Tranquilly minding his own business, picking at the coke bugs and feeling the barest beginnings of the dope rush that always waits to hit when he shoots speedballs, he doesn’t hear the approaching motor scooter until it is way too late.

"Hey boy, what are you doing…" says the NYPD scooter cop, who stops mid-sentence when he spots the dribble of blood from the side of Thomas’ wrist, running over the back of his hand, almost spelling out the words, "Bust Me, I’m an Idiot."

"Get up. Don’t move. Keep your hands where I can see them. What do you have there?" The cop can’t make up his mind what to do first, cuff him or call for backup, stumped at the brazen disregard Thomas shows by shooting up in the middle of the afternoon in the park.

Despite his initial confusion, it is only a couple of minutes before one of the unmarked Chevy vans that the anti-drug squad TNT drives around collecting unwary druggies in arrives. Thomas doesn’t have many belongings to go through, just one shoulder bag, which might be the reason the cops don’t pay much attention when they frisk him, missing his stash.

He is put into the back of the van where there are already a couple of other unfortunate souls with their hands cuffed behind them, sitting on the hot, uncovered metal floor. The two cops who ferry around the prisoners get in, and refuse to turn the air conditioning on, preferring to leave their windows open for the breeze, torturing those sitting in back under their care.

Hours pass. The back of the van fills slowly with bodies, more quickly with unbearable heat. Thomas manages after much discreet twisting and turning to rip open his two remaining bags of dope and coke and pour them onto his boot where he is able to sniff them up, getting very fucked up, extremely stoned and loose, which probably saves him the graphic injuries everyone else in the van suffers when the cop driving the van slams into a taxi stopped at the light at Ave. A and 7th Street, which in turn plows through a large pack of pedestrians crossing the street, killing 5 of them, and leaving the rest in broken bleeding heaps on the frying pan hot pavement, surrounded by severed limbs and screams of shock and horror. Other than for Thomas, the prisoners in the back aren’t much better off.

Ave. A and 7th St. The scene of the real crime

It turns out that while Thomas was sitting in the park getting himself high, then enjoying the afternoon safely planted on his butt bothering and endangering no one until getting arrested, the two cops driving the TNT van had been squelching their thirst all afternoon with repeated stops at Los Sombrero at Stanton and Ludlow for Margaritas to go, leaving them incredibly drunk behind the wheel of a motor vehicle as they collected other people under arrest for using and buying their own drugs of choice.

Thomas spends yet another week in Rikers until being released with a misdemeanor drug conviction. The cop riding shotgun gets off with a week of unpaid vacation time and a reprimand, while the cop driving the van gets fired, and receives 2 years probation, giving him lots of free time which he spends going back to school to study law using federal financial aid that killers, rapists, drunk drivers, and other convicted violent criminals qualify for, but dangerous druggies like Thomas don’t.