I'm getting pretty sick of being harrassed by the cops. More specifically, I'm sick of kissing ass and pretending to be scared just so I can avoid getting beaten for harmless and legal activities. They come down on us about three or four times a week, and it's always for that modern day crime: enjoying oneself for free. We've been harrassed for playing banjo and singing "this land is your land" on the streetcorner ("this ain't no concert hall"), for dancing in a public park (resulting in an open container ticket given to a Rat who was picking up other people's garbage, including beer cans), and in rich neighborhoods the whiteys are just terrified of everything so they call the cops on us and make up stories about us breaking windows or whatever. It's always the same: They lecture us, we act respectful, they let us go. It just wears me down, all this ass-kissing and apologizing for doing what? Being on the street. And here I'm spending all my free time with neighborhood kids and trying to make my community a better place, I'm no hood or criminal, I'm riding with anti-gang groups and being a model citizen who just happens to look different.

Today a cruiser swerved over into the bike lane, almost crushing me. When I yelled "bike lane! bike lane!" he pulled me over. I said, "You almost crushed me!" and he threatened, "now I have a chance to do it again." Then he yelled at me for a while about how cops can break the law anytime they want, they don't have to run the lights.

Some guy drove by and yelled, "Let 'im ride, man!" and that must have reminded him that he was being watched, because he let me go. Same thing happened when a cop ran a red light and almost creamed Al (another Rat), the cop yelled for a while but in the end he was wrong. But when they almost ran over Aurora (yet another Rat), she spat on the cruiser and they beat the shit out of her. It was an undercover car, she just thought it was some maniac trying to kill her. Even with this incident today, I was just responding as I do to any drunken maniac asshole driver who can't stay in their lane... I didn't realize at first they were cops.

Man, there's a dangerous gang in town, and they wear blue.@