That's what a white, male security officer said to a black, homeless woman at the Pine Street Inn yesterday, literally in front of a room full of people. I don't know why the staff at the Pine Street Inn had called security to have her removed; I did not see her do anything violent or disruptive.
I didn't know that anything was happening until I saw the male employee who has frequently harassed me standing over her where she was sitting in a chair in the front row of the seats in the lobby. He seemed to be haranguing her; a female staffperson then looked out of the office door and told him to leave her alone.
Then, a male security officer got to the women's side of the Pine Street Inn. He walked over to the woman and told her that she had to get up from her seat. She didn't want to, but she didn't raise her voice or make threatening movements. He then said that he was going to arrest her if she didn't immediately get up. She continued talking quietly, not getting up from her seat. He finally told her to get up so that he could arrest her. She said that she wanted to put on her coat; he initially refused and then seemed to begin to realize that everyone in the room was watching them. That didn't stop him from telling her to hurry up and saying "I will fucking drop you" if she continued to protest having to leave the shelter.
She put her coat on and he put her hands behind her back and handcuffed her.
Then, he took her by the arm with one hand, picked up his Starbucks iced coffee with the other, and brought her to near the front desk of the shelter. He put his coffee cup on the ledge next to the stairs and took sips from it while he stood behind her and talked to someone on his phone. Several minutes passed that way before he removed her from the building.
The way that she was treated was the result of these things:
-society's hatred of homeless people
-whatever it was that staff had told him about her before he started talking to her
-a lack of training and concern for how security officers are expected to talk to people who are not white or highly literate
-probably racism (People who aren't white who want me to remove the word "probably" from this section will not be argued with by me.)
I think that he could have left his coffee somewhere else and put more effort into getting her out of the building without being degrading or threatening.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 7, 2015 @ 10:17 a.m.
I corrected this page on December 9, 2015. It was a security officer, not a Boston Police officer, described in this incident.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 9, 2015 @ 6:01 p.m.
