Letters

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