By Evan Matthews
So this weekend I was in New York City for a track meet held in uptown (Harlem) and happened to be taken advantage of by the NYPD, or at least they tried. What had happened was while we were on our way to the track meet we got stopped by the NYPD while going through the subway ticket area getting our subway cards. As we started to enter through three NYPD officers stopped us and informed us that there was an additional fee for large out of state groups traveling through New York’s subway system (Which is completely false) and my coaches requested their names and badge numbers to report them. This wasn’t my first encounter with with corrupt police officers sadly but it impacted my teammates and myself cause it made me think do people really think were that gullible? I distinguished this as systematic injustice because the police tried using their authority and our lack of subway knowledge and the fact that we were from out of town for their personal gain. For this wrong to be righted honestly those officers need to lose their jobs and find another profession. They’re supposed to protect and serve not steal, there was some light that came from this situation though and that was I learned even though people have gained positions of power and authority does not mean they will carry out their duties in a righteous manner. My case of systematic injustice is not as extreme as MLK’s by any means but I think the two relate as people in positions of power were using those positions to exploit people and in my case for personal gain, in Dr. Kings case in was not for personal gain it was for the sheer fact that that’s how society was and many white people wanted to degrade and stop black folks from being equal to them in socioeconomic class.
https://images.app.goo.gl/7gXz151WDNSebKCs8
https://nypost.com/tag/nypd-corruption-scandal/