My Bio - Part 25

We had barely been in the house a few days when a knock on the door jolted me from a sound sleep on the morning of January 5th, at 10:30 AM. I peered out the window and saw a cop standing at the foot of the steps. Right away, I feared something may have happened to Tom. This was just before he switched to working days.

“Yes?” I asked after I opened the door.

“Are you Robin?” the cop inquired.

When I told him I wasn’t, he mentioned something about wanting to get word to her that her father was ill, asked for my name, and then left. I was too relieved that nothing had happened to Tom to think much more about the strange visit.

The next day, another rude awakening came—this time at 8:30 AM. Frustrated to be woken up twice in a row, I groggily shuffled to the door. The same cop was there, but I didn’t notice the others, who were hiding.

I flung the door open, ready to say, “Hey, I’m not Robin!” I figured I could just show my ID, go back to bed, and move on with my life. But before I could say anything, the cop stepped aside, and in walked a Black man who had been hiding around the corner. His shirt read “Biased Crimes,” and I’d soon learn his name was Jerry.

He wouldn’t explain why he was there at first. He asked for my name, showed me a picture of Tom, and asked if he was my husband. I said yes, then asked how he got the photo.

He shrugged and said, “I’ve got pictures of all your relatives.”

Was that supposed to intimidate me?

They let me dress in the bathroom, then led me outside. That’s when I saw four or five cruisers parked outside—some from Pinal County, others from Maricopa.

All this for one person?!

While I suspected the freeloaders in Phoenix were behind this, I started to wonder if something bigger was going on—something I didn’t know about. Could it be more than the journal excerpts I had shared when we left Phoenix, where I made it clear what I thought of the neighbors? Yes, I had used some very harsh and controversial words. But those words weren’t because I hated them for their color; I used them because I knew it would piss them off, and I wanted them to feel as angry as they had made me for years. It wasn’t about race—it was about them. Yet, they saw this as a perfect opportunity to make it about race. Sadly, after the OJ Simpson case, this became all too common.

I was cuffed and placed in a Phoenix PD cruiser with two white officers. The ride to Phoenix felt like it took forever. Meanwhile, Tom, still at work, had no idea I’d been legally kidnapped. I knew he’d be worried when he came home and found me missing but I was later able to call him and get a cab ride to his mother and sister’s place. That was the thing about the police; they’d gladly give you a ride when they wanted you but would happily leave you stranded when they were done with you.

I tried not to worry, reasoning that it was just words on paper. But then there was this Black cop—Jerry—who, for all I knew, might hate whites and was using his power to spite me. I told myself that kind of thing only happened in movies. Surely, this wasn’t about power and control. He couldn’t be that corrupt or vindictive, right?

Still, the way he looked at me—with such contempt blazing from his eyes—made me wonder. I had been lied to by law enforcement before, more than once.

What I didn’t know at the time was that Jerry was a personal friend of Joely, and both of them were everything they accused me of being—full of hate and vindictiveness. I also didn’t realize how anti-Jewish Arizona could be, or how corrupt law enforcement was. Ironically, I wasn’t even really “Jewish” just because my family was. I wasn’t religious at all, wasn’t sure I believed in God, and saw religion as a bunch of silly rules and superstitions, often narrow-minded, especially toward women and gays.

The scariest part of the whole ordeal was realizing that if this could happen to me, an ordinary person, it could happen to anyone. More and more people were being framed or jailed for petty or trumped-up charges, while real criminals walked free with barely a slap on the wrist.

Minorities were gaining the upper hand in the courts, especially after the L.A. riots. Judges were afraid to rule in favor of whites when minorities were involved—fearful of riots or accusations of racism. Because I was white and Jewish, I suffered greatly, as did Tom. Hurting me meant hurting him too. Tom would have to spend six lonely months apart from me, forced to take on both my responsibilities and his own.

Looking back, I regret being so polite and cooperative with Jerry once at the station. I should have kept my mouth shut and demanded he either charge me or let me go. That probably would’ve angered him enough to book me on the spot, but it didn’t matter—I was destined to end up in jail anyway.

I didn’t realize until nearly a year later, after my sentencing, that I had been convicted of sending a threatening letter. I had been tricked into pleading guilty to something I wasn’t even charged with because I was led to believe the case was about the journal excerpts, not this letter. This letter that either came from someone else they had crossed or was to frame me when Jerry handed it to me to ask if I had seen it, ultimately getting my fingerprints on it.

It still stuns me to this day that I spent six months in county jail, followed by years of probation, all because of a letter. Even if I’d been 100% guilty, it was a ridiculously harsh sentence, and anyone can make threats. But what’s that saying about actions speaking louder than words? No one was forced to read anything I actually did send.

So there I was, sent to jail in late October of 2000 for nothing more than words. First, Jerry told me the case would be dropped, then a public defender assured me I’d only get probation.

My probation was supposed to end in October 2003, and the minor felony dropped to a misdemeanor. But much to my surprise, my probation officer, Scot, told me I was off probation in May 2002, and in the end, I was vindicated.

But it was too late. The damage had already been done, and I had no intention of forgiving anyone involved. This paled in comparison to when my sister Tammy called the police on me after I wrote a threatening letter to her ex, who had been abusing my niece. I was stunned when she took his side after everything he supposedly put her and her daughter through.

I blamed my sister for my legal troubles just as much as I blamed the freeloaders and the corrupt cops, lawyers, and courts. After all, when the cop came to talk to me about Tammy’s complaint, he found, to my shock, that there was a Failure to Appear warrant out for me. I had no idea it existed because we didn’t have mail service where we lived. We had to pick up our mail from a PO box. If it weren’t for her, that warrant would have eventually expired, and I wouldn’t have gone through the hell I did.

She always denied calling the cops, even though it was a no-brainer that she was involved, especially since the cop mentioned her name as the main complainant. The only thing we weren’t sure of was how she got our address because we never told her where we moved to. I cut ties with everyone on my side of the family, including a few friends, upon moving.