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Meet Edward, The Black Man Who Escaped Punishment From Police
There was a time when Edward’s parents were afraid to have him inside the house.
This fear was most acute in the spring of 2005, three days after he’d returned home from an aimless, catastrophic Greyhound bus tour through the half the country, accruing an insurmountable amount of hospital debt during his stay at two separate mental institutions, one situated in Michigan and the other located just a few miles away from his parents’ modest one-story home.
He was off his psychotropic medications again, progressively losing control of his impulses, slamming his fists against the living room walls, kicking at objects with his feet, and screaming vulgar obscenities at his aging mother and father.
Edward’s father wrapped his arms around his wife’s shoulders, an attempt to shield her from the son the she loved. With two pairs of eyes wide open, his parents looked at him as if he was some kind of intruder, a stranger they were unable to recognize.
Edward couldn’t understand why his parents acted as if he was the enemy. For it was he who was being persecuted, conscripted to the role of societal pariah. “The whole entire world is conspiring against me!” Edward screamed, desperate. “You should be on my side.” Of course, his behavior made it nearly impossible for his parents…
