Men in Black and Blue
3.
Within two hours I was given my street clothes,
given my possessions (all in a manila envelope), and released
with a paper telling me to return to court in a few days. I also
had the paper saying I couldn’t go anywhere near my home or
wife. I didn’t have the heart to put my wedding ring back on. I
held it and looked at it for a while. I wanted my wife to put it
back on when I could someday see her again.
I was so upset with how badly they had botched
my case that I walked directly from the San Francisco County
Jail across town to the Mission Police station on Valencia and
told them I wanted tell my side of the story. I wanted to make a
complaint against my wife. I said she had committed
domestic violence against me and had made a knowingly false
report to the police. The San Francisco policeman behind the
glass window said no complaint would be written up because the
case was already being handled. I explained that false charges
had been made and the police were looking in the wrong
direction; they also had to listen to me, because whether they
believed it or not I was the victim. He said the case was
already being handled. I asked to talk to someone else, someone
higher. He said he was sorry he couldn’t help me; the case was
already being handled. "Yes, handled up side down!" I told him.
He basically told me he would not take a report just because I
was unhappy with my wife.
I went down the street to my bookstore. The
store was closed and dark. It was very nice to be someplace
familiar.
I went in and looked at the back storage room,
which was cluttered with boxes and junk. This would be my new
place to live because I could not return home. I couldn’t even
go home to get clothing or my toothbrush. Still, it was so nice
to be out of jail. My cats, Hank and Kafka, came to greet me.
I started to see the San Francisco Police in a
whole different light. I started to remember things. I
remembered how often men in the holding cells had described how
police would plant drugs on them. How they spoke of excessive
police violence at the time of arrest. I heard about how the
police would lie about facts up on the witness stand. I think
it’s fair to say my confidence and my image of the police was
irreparably broken.
After a couple weeks I asked my public defender
for a copy of the police report. I wanted to read it for myself.
I had told the police as clearly as language can make it that my
wife had deliberately broken the window. There was no fight,
struggle, or threat on my part. She had deliberately punched a
big hole in the window. But for some reason these details got
turned into something with a completely different flavor in the
police report. The report said, "Harrison stated Wahab began
flailing her arms and broke the kitchen window cutting her
hand." For one thing, suppose it went to trial and the
prosecutor asked me, "Mr. Harrison, you told police that your
wife was flailing about when the window got broken." And suppose
I answered, "No, that’s not what I said happened. I never use
the word flail and I said she had deliberately broken the
window." Why can’t the prosecutor then ask, "So, Mr. Harrison,
now you are changing your story. So were you lying when
you were questioned by the police or are you lying now?"
But aside from that, I had told police of a
deliberate action that was done by choice and then lied about; I
had told them of a clear violation of the law. But the written
police report managed to slip my wife out from any direct
incrimination while nailing me to hers. Then to dovetail it, the
reporting officer used his favored word, "flail," in my wife’s
account too. He wrote, "Wahab told Harrison again she wanted to
go to bed and Harrison pushed her in the chest forcing her
backwards and her left hand went flailing, breaking the kitchen
window, cutting her left and middle ring fingers." So it sounded
like we were in agreement about the sequence of events when this
wasn’t true at all. (By the way, within the week, in a sworn
written statement to a second court to obtain a second
restraining order, my wife said, "He finally pulled me so
hard that my hand went through a window").
The police account had changes and omissions.
Most important, it altered, shifted, and omitted details of what
I said. I really do not know if this was deliberate on the
officers’ part or they were hearing what they wanted to hear,
but I realized that Miranda was important after all. Having an
attorney present is an essential safeguard against words being
reshaped or twisted.
The weeks passed and my trial approached. I went
to the Hall of Justice on the day my trial was to begin.
Courtroom15, second floor. Prospective jurors filed into a
courtroom. Fifty-three of them. My public defender informed me
that four police officers were going to take the witness stand
against me. My wife was also going to testify against me; in
addition there would be two battered-wife syndrome experts. Four
police officers? All impeccably dressed? Guns on, hair clipped.
No, I guess they don’t allow guns in the courtroom. Sharp
posture, superb grooming? Each to tell jurors that I was guilty?
I’d never spoken with any of these people, except the one man
who watched me outside the apartment that night
and to give a quick
description to a second officer when I was questioned.
None of them knew what happened. Why were they pretending to
know? What had I ever done to
them?
For reasons I will explain in greater detail
later, instead of going straight ahead into trial, I accepted a
plea bargain out in the hall as the fifty-three prospective
jurors for my trial sat in the courtroom, silently waiting. The
public defender first said I could plead to one count of battery
and not face any jail time. I’d have probation, counseling, a
fine, and community service. When I asked if battery meant I had
hurt my wife, he said, "yes." I told him I had never hurt her or
threatened her or even called her a bad name, so I would not
ever let anyone or any record say that I did. He then told me
they had one other offer. I could plead to a small charge of
dissuading my wife from calling the police. I told him that
wasn’t true either. She had been on the phone with the police
when the police arrived. But pleading to this one charge seemed
a way to resolve the matter without catastrophic consequences.
So I pleaded "no contest" to that one count.
I did this because, for one thing, I had no
confidence that the truth could be determined. From the moment
my wife dialed 911, everything had gone wrong. I wanted
resolution of this legal nightmare; I wanted to restore my
broken marriage; I wanted to see and talk to my wife again, if
that was somehow possible. My wife had done terrible things, but
I loved her. I understood that in the part of the world she came
from you do not, ever, EVER, criticize the king, the Prophet
Mohammed or the Koran. I could forgive her and ask for her
forgiveness in return.
The justice system coming into our marriage was
like plowing a house down because of a broken toilet. Sure, the
toilet problem is fixed, but… It was just so crazy. It was like
bringing in a chainsaw because someone has a toothache. (I don’t
mean to minimize much more violent and serious cases of domestic
violence; I’m just talking about mine.) So, to get out of the
bear trap, I pleaded to a small charge. I believed at the time
that it would free me from any criminal suggestion that I had
hurt her.
After I agreed to plead to the minor charge, the
prospective jurors were dismissed. I was given three years
probation. Fifty-two weeks of domestic violence counseling. A
fine. Hours of community service. And the stay away order would
remain in effect for three years (unless my wife came to court
and succeeded in getting it changed, as frequently happens).
I left the court. That night, as I was working
at my bookstore, a woman came in and asked if I was Scott
Harrison. I said yes. She handed me an envelope and left.
I wondered what it was. I thought maybe my wife
had written me a long letter (she can contact me, but I am
forbidden to contact her). I opened the envelope. It contained a
whole bunch of court papers. My wife had filed for divorce and
was requesting that the court award immediate spousal support.
I sat there in complete shock. I just couldn’t
move. I couldn’t even bear to look at those papers with the
court filing stamps on them. I carefully put them back and
tucked them into a drawer in the desk. I just couldn’t look at
them. Not until many hours later, with a lot of tears. Within a
couple weeks I was ordered to send monthly checks to her lawyer.
A lawyer was working without charge for my wife, pro bono to
assist victims of domestic violence.
In the next weeks I wrote to the San Francisco
police and explained to them that they had totally botched up my
case, that I wanted them to look at it again and I wanted them
to talk to me. I told them they had made serious mistakes in my
case. Everyone makes mistakes but now was the time to have a
better second look.
I got no answer.
I wrote a longer second letter explaining how my
wife had a black belt in taekwando, how by staging a domestic
violence scene and lying she also had secured permission to
remain in America by special INS rules protecting domestic
violence victims. I sent pictures of Khadija in her black belt
outfit. I explained that after she broke the first window, she
had taken a swing at a second window. There were details and
evidence that they really needed to consider. They ignored my
second letter. And my third letter. And my fourth.
Then just a few weeks ago, after I sent a fifth
long letter to the police, Officer Peterson from the Domestic
Violence Unit of the San Francisco Police called me at 7:50 in
the morning. He was concerned because I had written in my fifth
letter that I felt I had no alternative left but to consider
filing a civil court suit against him, the other officers
involved, and the San Francisco Police Department, since all my
attempts to remedy a very serious miscarriage of police
procedure and a serious miscarriage of justice had totally
failed.
So Officer Peterson phoned me.
I explained the whole case. I said to him, "Mr.
Peterson, not only does she break American law with righteous
impunity; she makes a total mockery of domestic violence laws
and the true victims of domestic violence who need these laws.
She hijacks these laws. She uses the INS’s own rules to defraud
them. She violently silences someone freely expressing an
opinion and she had accomplices to help her pull this off. Now,
Mr. Peterson, you can believe what I’m telling you or you can
think of me as a liar but if what I’m saying might be true (I
guarantee you it is true), then just for the sake of the
scales of justice, I should think these matters are serious
enough to look into. Serious enough to investigate at least half
as much as the false accusations against me. If every man that
is arrested says they are ‘set up’ and you decide that you
should never listen to anyone who says it, what kind of justice
is that! You see people do get set up. I was set up and the only
possible way to stop it is to have very clean, very good
procedures, to genuinely presume innocence without merely giving
lip service to it, and to conduct investigations that seriously
consider both sides to any story and proceed with genuine
objectivity. Look, Mr. Peterson, I have no interest at all in
going to court or suing the police department but I just want
this mess looked into because it was handled terribly wrong. I
just want the truth to be known. "
Detective Peterson said I should have talked to
him when he came to speak to me in jail (I had tried but wanted
legal guidance). He said that because I had pleaded guilty to a
charge, any charge, didn’t matter which charge, the case was
officially sealed, done, and complete. He said that one way I
could reopen my case was to stop following all conditions of my
probation; then the matter would go before a judge. (My
probation officer assured me such an action would not open the
case but would only guarantee that I’d be in violation of my
probation and sent to jail.)
I tried to explain to Mr. Peterson that whatever
the San Francisco Police Department internal rules said, this
advice did not address the wrong done to me. It did not correct
procedures that were wrong. It did nothing in the slightest to
prevent other women from doing exactly the same thing. He was a
very good listener. I had been working for many months writing
letters and I was glad someone had called me. I asked Mr.
Peterson, "I’m curious. My wife broke the dishes and the window
but she didn’t directly hit me. From what I’ve described, would
it be considered domestic violence? Would she be guilty
of domestic violence?"
He answered, "Yes. Because of the fear she would
have induced with that level of violence, yes, it would be
domestic violence."
"So despite everything I’ve told you and despite
the fact that you were the chief inspector on this case, you are
telling me there is nothing you can do?"
"That’s correct. There is nothing I can do."
We had talked maybe half an hour. It took three
quarters of a year to talk half an hour.
It was so convenient for the police to have
rules such as they do. How can I describe it? It’s like I am
admitted to the hospital for a broken hand and instead they take
out a kidney and half my stomach (Oops! Wrong patient. Sorry!)
And when I finally talk to the head surgeon he tells me, "Oh,
I’m sorry Mr. Harrison but we can not reopen your case because
you left the hospital. Once you leave the hospital there is
nothing we can do. Your case is closed and sealed."
"Oh."
