When I called the cops on a Black man (Issue #22)

And a single sentence I'll never forget.

Author

Chris Musei-Sequeira
August 09, 2025

This photograph shows four raised arms with hands in fists, in the foreground. In the lower right is the top of a person's head, wearing a black hoodie. In the upper left is a yellow sign; more yellow signs can be seen in the mid-ground. In the background is a light-colored building and a cloudless blue sky.

I called the cops on a Black man once. It was 12 years ago, and I still regret it.

Spoiler alert: nothing happened to him... as far as I'm aware. But I learned something about myself and about my own internalized racism that day. Short story, so here goes:

It was a dark and stormy night.

No, really: it was raining, and it was after sunset. In the Queens, New York neighborhood of Ozone Park1 , I was walking to my apartment when I noticed a man standing against the building door. Just standing… “standing while Black,” you might say. I knew all my neighbors (there were only three apartments in the building), so I knew this man wasn’t from there.

As I approached him, certain questions came to my mind:

  • “What does this person want?”

  • “Is he going to move?”

  • “Maybe he's going to do something nefarious?”

  • “Maybe he's going to take my keys while I try to open the door?”

  • “Maybe he's going to barge in after me…”

I decided to cross the street before I got too close. Then I watched him and waited for him to leave. I waited… and I waited… and I waited. How long in wall clock time? No idea… it just felt like a long time.

Finally I said to myself: “who would the helpers be in this situation? Ah yes… the police! That's what they're for, right? To help?”

So I pulled out my phone and I called 911.

I don't remember what I said, but it was likely along the lines of, "There's a man standing in front of my apartment door and I don't know what he wants." The dispatcher must have said something like, "Okay, we'll send someone to check on it." Just check on the place, make sure the apartment looks secure, Home Alone-style.

Before the police could show up, the man left the apartment door and walked away. So, I called 911 again and I said something like, "The guy's gone now, so I'm canceling my 911 call." That’s when the dispatcher replied with a single sentence I will never forget:

"We don't cancel 911 calls."

I went through the building door and up to my apartment. I don't know if police ever showed up, and I never saw that guy again.

The next day, I spoke to my dear friend the downstairs neighbor about it. (A White woman, in case that matters to you.) She said to me, "He probably just wanted to get out of the rain." And I thought to myself, "Oh, there's a tiny little awning over the apartment door, so it makes sense."

So why was I afraid of this person that I'd never met? Why didn't I just go up to him and say, "Pardon me, this is my apartment, and I want to open the door and go inside." Or, why didn’t I just keep walking and go around the block another time or two… like a healthy and well-adjusted adult? I'm not going to play historical revisionist and pretend to know what I would have done if he were a White man. But I feel confident in saying that race was one factor contributing to my fear of this total stranger. Him presenting as a man was probably another factor. He was taller than me, which would have been another factor. And it was a dark and stormy night, so I really wanted to go home. And you know what? I think he even had a hoodie on. (So scary!)

But wait a minute… I was just trusting my gut, right? My gut said, “stay away,” and I listened… so it’s a win! I guess my gut said “call the cops” too, yes?

There's a big discussion we could have about socialization in the United States of America. We could discuss at length all the messages that we get (covertly and overtly) about who is safe and who is not, who is good and who is bad…and who is inherently trustworthy or untrustworthy. That is to say: we could discuss at length where the “gut” actually comes from… and what we do with the information it gives us. Did my mother ever tell me as a child, “don’t approach a Black man standing in the doorway on a dark and stormy night”? Absolutely not. In fact, she effectively told me the opposite: “I don’t want you to watch that show Cops on TV.” As an immigrant from a majority-black country (Trinidad & Tobago) who settled in Boston, she certainly had insights that I did not. I guess I didn’t understand what she was trying to tell me all those years ago.

Several years after that night, I moved to the north shore of Staten Island. I would walk regularly by Tompkinsville Park, where an NYPD officer choked away the life of Eric Garner over some cigarettes. I would see flowers sitting in front of Bay Beauty Supply, where he died. And I would think back to that man I called the cops on for doing nothing except standing in a place I didn’t want him to be… and I would be grateful that the cops never showed up.

For the record, in case that man is reading this article, I just want to say:

I'm sorry.

(Adapted from my video channel on TikTok and YouTube.)

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My name is Chris Musei-Sequeira, and I use he/him pronouns. My mother was born in Trinidad and Tobago as a descendant of African slaves brought to the islands during the time of European colonization. She came to the United States of America (USA) at the age of 10. My father is Goan and was born in India, in Mumbai, and raised Catholic and English-speaking. He came to the USA for his graduate studies, where he met my mother.

My sister and I were born in the USA and lived a middle-class life in the suburbs of multiple American cities. I studied aeronautical engineering and technology policy in university, then worked at the Federal Aviation Administration and as an aviation consultant. I've lived in cities up and down the USA East Coast since the age of 18; I now reside in Queens, New York with my wife.

I thank Heather Luna and Lavinia Muth for showing me the importance of publicly expressing our positions. Because of our positions, all of us are very familiar with some aspects of the world while having no idea of other aspects. Positionality expresses how our individual positions affect our relationships with other people and with the world as a whole.

Image source: Barnes, E. (2012, April 7). 66.MillionHoodiesRally.FreedomPlaza.WDC.7April2012. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/perspective/8516582580/in/album-72157629805141591 — License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.

1  Yes, “Ozone Park.” Named back when some people thought huffing ozone was good for your health.