Holiday Gift Giving and Racism

Posted by: Blue

Shoplifting calls have skyrocketed in the past few weeks.  Everyone wants to give something to their family for Christmas.  Some people just steal the presents instead of paying for them with their hard-earned money.

This weekend was cheque weekend.  The drunk tank had a steady line of cruisers waiting to deposit their detainees who were full of Holiday Cheer.  I personally tanked 3 people. 

Two of them were celebrating their birthdays (separate events). 

The other one was having a family reunion and had come from up on one of the Northern Aboriginal reserves with the rest of the family to bring her daughter in for medical appointments.  She was screaming the entire way to the tank that we couldn't take her away from her daughter.  I calmly told her that we could, and we had, and that her daughter would be fine with Child and Family Services for the night.  She called me and my partner racist.  My partner, who is half Native, told her so, also explaining that his wife was full-blooded Native and was the daughter of a Chief and that we were not in fact racist, but that we could not leave a five-year-old child in the care of adults who were so intoxicated that they could not stand.

I went on to tell her that I believed that she was the racist one for jumping to the conclusion that because I happen to be white and also happened to be doing my job and caring for her child because she couldn't be bothered to stay sober enough to guarantee that her daughter made it to the hospital the next day, that I was the racist one.  I told her she should be ashamed of herself and that maybe she should rethink the events that brought her to the tank that night while she was sobering up in the concrete cell. 

She was quiet for the rest of the trip.

I love people and I try to have a lot of patience, but even the most loving parent can turn into a horrible person with too much alcohol.  Alcohol and drugs change people.  Everyone who I deal with who is intoxicated is an entirely different person if I run into them and they are sober.  Most of them apologize for how they were when I was dealing with them last.  I am always willing to forgive and to treat them how they are treating me at the time.