A MOM’S PERSPECTIVE

A budding police officer until one fateful day

By Sonia Huggins

Sonia Huggins is an educator who recently gave up her distinguished career as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. She is a regular contributor to SideOne.

When my girls were very small, we smiled and waved at the police and conversed with them whenever possible. My goal, as a young mother, was to make interactions with the police pleasant and without fear. Every positive opportunity to interact with the police was accepted and encouraged. This was a behaviour we modelled throughout my daughters’ childhood.

As we all sat down, he recounted what had just happened with the police. He had been racially profiled, humiliated, and handcuffed for a simple parking infraction

By the time our eldest daughter was 10, she had decided to become a Montreal police officer. I always thought that was because she watched too many crime shows (which she loved). I completely overlooked the way in which we had brought them up -- to admire and respect officers of the law.

When she was an early teen, I arranged a ride-along with the police in our suburban community. She was able to see some of what they did in a day. She couldn't contain her excitement. Still, I could not comprehend why she wanted to be a police officer. Her soft and sweet persona just didn't seem to match with her career goal, but she insisted. So we began making plans for her to enter the police academy.

THE DAY IT ALL CHANGED

One day, my husband came home from work angry and distraught. His eyes filled with fury at the injustice he had just suffered at the hands of the police we had taught our girls to revere. As he stormed into the house, our eldest daughter saw him first and realized that Dad was in a terrible state.

As we all sat down, he recounted what had just happened with the police. He had been racially profiled, humiliated, and handcuffed for a simple parking infraction – then summarily released with three tickets stuffed into his hand.

As he talked to our family, we were all deeply affected by this incident – especially our eldest daughter, who had always known her father to be

an even-tempered, soft-spoken man. Hearing him recount how he had been unjustly treated and manhandled made her question how her father, a man who came from a law-abiding, respect-forauthority background, had his whole sense of fair play arbitrarily upended.

She questioned the institution that was supposed to serve and protect as she watched her Dad go through these difficult emotions. She wondered how to process a blatantly unfair racial situation. At that moment, she made the monumental decision not to enter law enforcement, not to pursue her chosen career. It was too close to home, too close to her beloved father.

A DECISION THAT WOULDN’T BE RECONSIDERED

Despite encouragement from us, she refused to ever consider it again. Her world had been disrupted by the heinous way in which her father had been treated by the very people she had so long admired. Even though I had taught my girls about racism and discrimination, told them stories of inequality, and, as a black history educator, guided them through many hypothetical racial scenarios, they had never experienced it first-hand. Their father’s experience was a shock.

She questioned the institution that was supposed to serve and protect as she watched her Dad go through these difficult emotions.

My family lived with the pain of this incident until many months later, when my husband challenged the tickets in court and all were dismissed by an understanding judge.

But the memory is triggered every time a Black Lives Matter incident occurs, with a deadly outcome over something minor. We are all painfully aware of what might have been on that very day.