Events That Occurred in Kansas City, Missouri - Essay Example

The following is based upon true events that occurred in Kansas Missouri. The s have been changed, as have the details somewhat, but the basis is on an incident that really happened. On May 19, 2008, a woman by the name of Sofia Udon was driving in the midtown area of Kansas City. Udon is a native of Sudan, and has been in this country for only 3 months. She also has six children, five of which are in foster care, and were put into foster care due to Udons neglect. Udon is currently pregnant with her seventh child. On the date in question, Udon was returning from a liquor store, and was intoxicated while driving. A policewoman, Officer Patty Porter, pulls Udon over. Porter asks Udon for her name. Udon gives her a false name. Porter asks Udon for her drivers license, proof of insurance, and car registration. Udon has none of these. Porter then goes back to her patrol car to call in the license plate. It turns out that the car, while registered to Udon, does not have current tags. Since Udons license plate displayed the current registration tag, Porter surmises, correctly, that Udon has stolen the tag. Porter also finds out that Udon does not have a drivers license, had never possessed a drivers license, and does not have insurance. Porter goes back to the car to talk to Udon, and then, upon coming back to the car, the policewoman notices the smell of alcohol on Udons breath. Therefore, Porter asks Udon to get out of the car so that she can give Udon the field sobriety test. However, Udon refuses, stating that she is pregnant and bleeding and needs to go to the hospital. Porter, having heard similar excuses 100 times a day from people who are trying to get out of a ticket or having to do a field sobriety test, refuses the request and continues to ask Udon to step out of the car so that Udon can take a field sobriety test. Udon continues to refuse, then finally relents. Since Udon was heavily intoxicated, she fails the field sobriety test in spectacular fashion, so Porter handcuffs her and takes her to the station. While in the car, Udon continually states that she is bleeding and needs to go to the hospital. Porter immediately assumes that, even if Udon is bleeding, it is probably because she is on her menstrual cycle and Udon was not to be trusted. After all, Udon gave Porter a false name, was driving in a car that was not registered, was driving intoxicated, and had neither a drivers license nor insurance. There was no reason for Porter to believe Udons story about having a miscarriage and needing to go to the hospital. And, as stated before, people, when pulled over, offer all kinds of excuses as to why they are speeding or why they cannot perform a field sobriety test. Many people have stated to the policewoman that they have a medical emergency that they must attend to, especially when they are about to be arrested. Early in her career, Porter gave these people the benefit of the doubt and either let them go or, if time permitted, followed them to the hospital or gave the people rides to the hospital. In more serious cases, Porter was required to stay in the hospital until the people could be checked out, so that, once they are discharged from the hospital, they could be taken directly into custody. However, on every single occasion when this occurred – when Porter stayed at the hospital with the person so that she could take the person into custody afterwards – the person had nothing wrong with them. It was a waste of Porters time to have taken these people to the hospital, and all it got the person was a more serious charge. As for the others, the ones who Porter either let go or escorted to the hospital and then left them there, she imagined that these people probably had nothing wrong with them, either. In this case, Udon was facing serious charges. Driving while intoxicated, driving without a drivers license, driving a car with stolen tags, giving Porter a false name, driving without insurance – these are all charges that Udon was facing, and, it turns out, after calling in Udons name, Udon also has warrants. Lots of warrants. Unpaid speeding tickets. Failure to appear in court for a charge of leaving the scene of an accident. Domestic violence warrants. A total of 12 warrants in Udons name was discovered by Porter after calling in Udons name. In the meantime, the pleas from the woman are getting louder and more desperate. “Please take me to the hospital. I am pregnant and I am bleeding. I am scared that I am miscarrying. Please, I dont want my unborn son to die.” However, having just found out about Udons track record, Porter was in no mood to listen. “The woman is a menace to society,” Porter thinks, and drives on to the station where Udon is booked into a cell. Once Udon is in a cell, she tells anyone who will listen that she is bleeding and needs medical help. Her pleas go ignored by everybody. Like Porter, they had heard it all, and, 99.9% of the time, the pleas about needing medical attention are fake. People will say anything to get out of being arrested, especially if, like Udon, they are facing serious charges. And, every officer knows that Udon would have to go to the public hospital, if they were to accompany her to a hospital, and that particular hospital is notorious for long waits in the emergency room. Patients wait for six hours or more to be seen there, unless there is an obvious life-threatening medical problem, simply because the hospital is understaffed and, located in the heart of the city, it deals with a massive amount of patients, many with critical needs – gunshot wounds, stab wounds, and the like. It being Saturday night, the ER will be a zoo – students with alcohol poisoning, people who had been in bar fights, along with all the other sundry problems that are seen at the ER. The officers have been to that ER on a Saturday night, and none of them relished the thought of going there with this woman and staying with her. Yet, that would be the only option if Udon was to get medical care, because they could not just leave Udon there because they would lose control of her. And, with all the problems this woman is facing, losing control of her is not an option. In the morning, Udon is booked, processed and released on bail. Whereupon, Udon goes to to the hospital, where it is discovered that she had miscarried a five month old fetus. Udon is scheduled for a D&C. While Udon is from Sudan, and only has been in America for a matter of months, she nonetheless knows the American way, and this is to sue when things go wrong. She promptly contacts an attorney to take on the Porter and the others who held her in custody the previous night. The attorney then goes to the media, and the case explodes. Predictably, the narrative on the case deals with race. She is black, Porter is white. Udon is also very poor. Anytime there is a race card to be played, it is, it seems, even in a ostensibly “post-racial” America. Seemingly lost in the dialogue is the fact that Udon was clearly in the wrong in this case. Porter was also wrong, but, considering what she was working with – a lying suspect who was intoxicated and had many warrants – perhaps one can give her the benefit of the doubt. However, because the case became about race – in the eyes of black and immigrant communities, this case was nothing more than police brutality on their community – Porter is suspended without pay, while an investigation about her role in Udons miscarriage gets underway. In the end, among testimony that Udons fetus might have been viable, and, if she had gotten to the hospital on time, the fetus might have been saved, Udon wins $750,000 from the police department and Porter is fired. The decision for Porter is morally difficult because she was faced with three choices, none of them ideal – either believe Udon and let her go, believe Udon and accompany her to the hospital, or not believe Udon and ignore her pleas for medical attention. Perhaps, because the case involves something as serious as a threatened miscarriage, it would have been morally proper to take Udon to the hospital and wait it out with her. This would be a major inconvenience for Porter, yet, in this case, it would have turned out to be prudent. But is Porters reasoning for not doing so – that many others have tried the same excuse, and it has always turned out to be a lie – valid? In essence, Porter is punishing Udon for the sins of others. Its like the people who used to go to the beach and smoke, then throw their cigarettes into the sand. Eventually, the city council got fed up with this and banned smoking altogether. To this, responsible individuals howled about the injustice of it all – they never threw their cigarettes butts on the beach, so why do they have to be punished for the people who did? Who knows, but it is a well-known maxim that “one bad apple ruins the whole bunch.” As it was with Udon. Porter was using the past experience of all the miscreants who, in essence, made her sit in a hospital waiting room for hours, only to be examined and found that there is nothing wrong. After doing that a few times, and being burned every time, Porter did not want to do that again. And, the alternative – letting Udon go, was not possible. Udon simply had too many strikes against her – unpaid warrants, driving while intoxicated, no drivers license, no current registration, lying about her name, no insurance – to be let go. It would be one thing if this was a simple traffic ticket. Then it would not be a problem in letting Udon go. But Udon had proved to be a shady character at best, and very irresponsible, and was, after all, a criminal. Add this to the fact that letting Udon go would necessarily mean that an intoxicated woman would be allowed to proceed behind the wheel of a car, and all that would entail – if somebody got hurt or killed by Udon that night, it would be Porters fault – and letting Udon go was not right decision at all. This was also a difficult decision because of several other factors. First, Udon is allegedly pregnant, yet was drunk. The fact that Udon was drunk would seem to indicate that she was not pregnant, as it is a well-known fact that pregnant women should not drink alcohol. Of course, it does not stop many pregnant women from doing so, but, still, this factor should weigh in on Porters decision about whether or not to believe Udon. Second is Udons character. This is a woman who lies, as she lied to Porter about her name. Add this to all the fact that the woman is clearly irresponsible, and it becomes more and more difficult to believe Udons story. Given that this was a lying woman who was drinking, it is understandable that Porter would not believe Udons story. And there is another factor, one that is a bit ugly and was not really brought up by any of the parties involved, including the attorney or the activists who pushed the police force hard on this case. But it has to be asked – this is a woman who bore six children, neglected five of them to the point that these children were put into foster care, yet was pregnant again. Does this woman really need another child? This is a terrible question to ask, as the fetus is still a life who is entitled to life, but perhaps the miscarriage is Mother Natures way of ensuring that this woman does not continue to reproduce. If the case is looked upon in this way, the entire incident is a blessing in disguise, for it prevented another child from being born into the situation that the other children were born into. At any rate, there was considerable controversy in the case about whether prompt medical attention would have even helped. This is a woman who, at five months gestation, is bleeding red blood. While it is impossible to tell, many doctors surmised that there was no saving the fetus, but that a miscarriage was inevitable. Therefore, denying the woman medical care only delayed the inevitable and did not cause the miscarriage. In evaluating what was done, one has to weigh all the factors. The factors have been well-stated, but are worth repeating. Udon was intoxicated while driving and had many strikes against her. Porter has heard the excuses thousands of times before, and none of them had turned out to be true. There was no reason to believe Udon, as she had lied about her name and was drinking, which would weigh against a pregnancy story. Plus, there is the issue of time spent in emergency rooms. If every police officer had to accompany a suspect to the ER every time the suspect states that they need urgent medical attention, then this is obviously a waste of taxpayers dollars and a threat to the community, as police officers will be wasting time waiting, for hours on end, for lying suspects, instead of using this time constructively chasing bad guys. On the other hand, Udons story, if true, would have a tragic ending, as it would result in the loss of life, and this is, in fact, what happened. It is therefore a serious matter and perhaps should have been investigated more seriously. All the options were imperfect at best, and all had their drawbacks. In reviewing the case in hindsight, of course, the best option would have been to take Udons pleas seriously. Porter could have went with Udon to a nearby bathroom, perhaps to a gas station, and asked Udon to show her proof that she was bleeding. Of course, this might be against police protocol and procedure, as it would have required Udon to strip in front of a police officer, but, both parties being female, it might not have posed a problem. Of course, there is always the problem that, perhaps, Udon was on her period and was trying to pretend that it was a miscarriage. But, presumably, there would be enough blood that it was obviously not a period and was something more serious. Which also brings up another point, one that was not really brought out all that well in the story – but couldnt the Porter tell that Udon was bleeding? In a miscarriage, there would presumably be a lot of blood, yet there was no indication that the bleeding was readily apparent to the Porter. Therefore, if the bleeding was not readily apparent to Porter, then this is yet another factor that would point to Udon lying. The above solution was proposed in looking at the case in hindsight. Udon was bleeding, she was miscarrying, and Porter did ignore her. If Porter did take Udon seriously, and, at the very least, investigated her claims, then maybe, just maybe, the fetus could have been saved and a miscarriage prevented. But the case cannot just be looked at in hindsight, because it gives an inaccurate picture of what the choices are and what should have been done. In this case, it is necessary to view the picture as it really was, and how the officer saw the situation. And, even though it turns out that Udon was in need of medical attention, probably what Porter did was, in the end, the right thing to do. Udon needed to be taken into custody for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that she was intoxicated and driving. In fact, in light of Udons history of not showing up to court dates, more probably should have been done to hold her in custody. And, as callous as it sounds, it would seem that, according to testimony that was brought out at Udons trial, a miscarriage was already underway and was inevitable, so Porter did not actually cause a miscarriage. She just delayed Udon getting help for an already existent miscarriage. There is another option that can be explored, one that is novel. This option is that, perhaps, a doctor should have been called to Udons cell where she was staying. Perhaps the police force can have a doctor on call for situations where a held person is having a medical problem. After all, it would seem that Udons case was not unique, in that there have undoubtedly been others who have been held and had a medical emergency while they were in custody. Therefore, having a doctor on call would be the prudent thing to do. The advantages to this approach would be that Udon, and others, like her, who need urgent medical attention, would get some kind of care while they are in custody. And, it would obviate the necessity of police officers spending time in hospital emergency rooms awaiting suspects release, when they could be spending that time on the streets, chasing bad guys. And, in Udons case, the doctor would presumably be able to tell, after a short exam, whether Udon was telling the truth. Whereupon, it would have been incumbent for the police to release Udon to a hospital. No question. In the end, there are no good answers for this case. The only thing that is clear is that the case was turned into a racial story, and this is one thing that should not have been done. The community made this story about a poor black person against a white officer, when this is the one factor that should never have been considered. At its base, it is a story about a lying, intoxicated woman and an officer who ignored the womans pleas for medical attention. This could have happened just as easily if the officer was black and the suspect was white. What matters is the facts of the case, not the color of the parties, and the fact that the case turned on race is the one thing that makes the entire incident an abomination. Read More