Fabian Williams, 39, is an artist in Decatur; his upcoming show is "The Race Card." Williams recounts an episode that occurred in Fayetteville, N.C., where he grew up. Williams was interviewed by staff writer Ernie Suggs. His comments have been edited for space and clarity.
I was 18. I was riding with a friend of mine. This guy named “W,” Dwayne Wright. He is also a fellow artist from Fayetteville. He stayed five minutes down the street from me. We were coming from the mall. We get pulled over by this black cop and as we pull in I remembered thinking why was he pulling us over.
Because we were just making a turn at the left light onto Ramsey Street, the street where me and W lived.
I told W to pull into a lighted station so we wouldn’t have issues. So he pulls into a Bojangles' parking lot, which was closed. It was a little past 11, like 11:15 p.m. I noticed that there were no cars there and the lights were dim. I was like, “Aw man, this is gonna be a problem.”
So the cop gets out the car. He is walking toward us and he grabs his gun.
We are like, “Oh, [expletive]."
And he tells us to put our hands on the dash. So we put our hands on the dash and we wait for him to come to the window.
We have our hands on the dash. He takes a couple of more steps, and then puts his hand back on his gun. He doesn’t say anything.
We like, “Yo. Hands on the dash. What’s the problem?”
He is acting mad jumpy. He finally gets to the window and asks for license and registration. So W gives him the license and registration. He looks at it, calls it in. Then he says, “The reason I pulled y'all over is because the registration is expired.”
The week before I actually watched W put the registration (sticker) on his car. So I knew the registration was good. And that is when I realized this dude just pulled us over because we were young and black. That’s it.
If you go and look at the date on the registration, it says 1995 and it was 1994, so why did you pull us over? “Why did you pull us over?”
He was like, “If you want to file a report…."
And when he was saying this, he was holding on to this big-ass, chrome .45.
We were like, “Cool. Don’t worry about it. We just want to go on.”
That was like one of the first times we realized that our relationship with police officers was not your typical situation.
It was scary. I grew up in a military household, but I never fired a gun and I never had a gun pulled on me. But the fact that he kept going for his gun – twice – just made me realized that these dudes are really scared of us. And these are cops. I am 17. I didn’t sag my pants or any of that [expletive]. I was just a kid. I don’t have a record and this dude went for his gun twice.
That changed how I looked at cops in general and from that point, I kept my distance. Because I didn't trust them. They were acting crazy on me. I can't say it has been a downhill thing, but it ain't been cool. That happened when I was a teenager, and I am 39 now.
