Still have PTSD from an encounter with my SRO from high school in 2007
Just being able to type this out is a lot to process. It haunts me every day, traumatizing to even type out or talk about.
I want to give a disclaimer that I am not totally innocent in what happened. I want to preface that some of my words and actions deviated from social norms, but being 15 years old at the time, isolated, very few friends growing up and later finding out I was on the spectrum, I really had no clue what I was doing. I take some blame for sure, but I also don't think two wrongs make a right.
I was 14-15, a freshman in high school, had a best friend and he had a girlfriend, whom I actually happened to like myself. This best friend starts telling me how much he's treated her like garbage while I'm visiting him at work. He says he'd cheated on her, twice, talked about dumping her, all this other nonsense he's spewing about her. This made me want to be with her also because I felt she deserved to be treated better.
They break up. I give her a rose for Valentine's Day, try contacting and messaging and she cuts me short at times, ask her out to dinner, no response. You might ask why I didn't stop, because, not knowing how things worked back then, she did not specifically tell me no.
My father (whom I've long since cut out of my life) was telling me about winning her over with poetry, so I began writing love letters, and had a mutual friend deliver them to her while I was anonymous - we were all in a mutual activity together.
However, I also had made some comments that were on the rather lusty side about her to some friends online. I had shared her MySpace to this online chat, then someone secretly messaged her behind my back, guess he didn't like me at the time.
I get pulled out of class that Monday to talk to the SRO and also the head dean at the school. They're nice, but they tell me don't communicate, stop the letters, etc. Okay, fine, but I was hurt I couldn't be with her.
The next day at school, May 15, 2007, before class, I'm out in the hallway and I look at her from behind for a couple of minutes. I say absolutely nothing. I was just hurt. That's all. I thought nothing of it. I never got into trouble during school, haven't really been in trouble with the law since or even before then.
I get pulled out by the head dean during class, then I ask what this is about. He doesn't tell me. I'm in a waiting room, the SRO says, "Come with me." He walks me into a room, opens and slams the door screaming at the top of his lungs.
"SIT DOWN!!!! YESTERDAY, I WAS A NICE COP!!! TODAY, I'M NOT GOING TO BE!!!!"
Having no clue what this about...."I, I, I," struggling to get the words out of my mouth.
"SHUT UP!"
He asks me if I understood what I was told the day before.
"Yes."
"SO, WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT HER FOR!!!!!"
Hold up, you never specifically told me that. All you told me is not to communicate with her, to sever contact, I didn't go up to her, kept my distance, her back was turned to me, but it gets worse.
I forget all the exact sequences of everything, but I remember all the things he's saying to me.
"Did you tell anyone about this?"
"Yes."
"WHY?"
I forget what I said.
"I will take the criminal you are not and I will MAKE YOU INTO ONE and you can tell all your friends out in California!"
So, he's threatening to send me to another state. I'm in the Midwest.
"THIS. WILL. STOP."
"I'm not your mother. I'm not your friend. There are no second chances. You get one chance with me, and you burned it!"
"I will LOCK YOU IN A ROOM WITH (girl's name's) FATHER, and I guarantee you won't leave standing up!"
"If I hear the slightest rumor about you, I WILL TAKE YOU STRAIGHT TO JAIL!!!!!"
So, looking back on it, someone could've totally made something up about me, and I'd have been arrested for it.
He says, "Go out in the hall and let me cool down before I throw you out of a window!"
I'm in that hallway/waiting hall, I still remember shivering, being scared to death.
I get called back in by the SRO. He has his back turned to me, simply points his finger for me to sit.
He tells me I've been suspended.
"If you show up, or if I catch you hanging out around here, I will not only arrest you, I'll also probably kick your ass."
There were no incidents after that - was more civil and cordial, even after I graduated. For years, I thought it was all my fault and I deserved it. My family would threaten to report me to him if they didn't like my behavior at home, knowing I hated him, but not knowing how bad he really was that day. He had a God complex and a big ego, he's retired now. Even as he tried to help me out and told me it's in the past, doesn't change the fact that some scars never heal.
I've been especially traumatized by this since 2011. Again, I was going to do nothing to this girl, lay no finger on her, nothing. I later apologized and she forgave me, said minimal things to her by circumstance (was not kicked out of the activity, she was two grades ahead of me. The last time I saw her was in 2010 when she was working. I avoided her, but she tapped on the window from work and waved to me).
It wasn't until the 2010s when I saw all the killings by police officers of different black men and the excessive force they used - how people were saying it's not an officer's job to be judge, jury and executioner, they're not supposed to shoot people even when guilty and how different men had their rights violated.
Looking back on it now, he was almost three times my age, more than 20 years in the force at the time, and I feel like I had my rights violated, that it wasn't his job to be threatening me with arrests multiple times, violence multiple times or to send me to a different part of the country.
I finally told my mom what happened in 2020, told another loved one in 2024 what happened, and I was traumatized reliving it on FaceTime 17 years later, even while in another state. This loved told me that if they knew he acted like that, they'd have reported him to the school and/or the police chief. Other therapists and a friend have told me he was in the wrong.
So, when I see this stuff about cops in the news using excessive force or about ICE, and MAGA says to follow orders - I tried to, legitimately, to the honest and best of my ability, to do just that and am still living with trauma nearly 20 years later.
I am not blameless. I did some things I would never do today, but I would equate what happened with me to being verbally raped. I remember soaking in the bathtub later that evening thinking he was going to burst through my bathroom door and get me.
And I've hated police ever since then. I hear stories about how bullies become cops. I think I can attest to that - being bullied, picked on, teased from grades K-12 (though they lessened after 9th grade), I remember one of my classmates who bullied me. He was a smartass, had a cocky laugh and thought everything was funny - laughing at me and others. One time gym class ended my senior year, I was walking into the locker room, he feels the need to put his hands on me from behind and move me forward into the locker room. I get him off of me and he starts laughing like a real jerk.
"Hit me, (EnergizedLib)."
I decide he isn't worth it and kept my cool. He was nicer to me when he visited a place I worked at in 2016, but since had become a cop (he visited work while off-duty), and while I've rarely ever talked or kept in contact with people from high school (even less from college), I sometimes Google my old classmates to see what they're up to. I see that as a cop, he's since been put on the Brady List. And considering what a punk he was in high school, I'm not surprised.
So, this hits home. I hate ICE, I hate police. I will never forgive the person who did this to me, even if I inadvertently got myself in a sticky situation with such a lack of social awareness at the time. My best friend and I at the time continued hanging out, as he later forgave me, though he didn't graduate on time, but got all the girls. He would quit and go from job-to-job, became an unwed father at 22 and took me on a car ride with his then pregnant girlfriend and put a lit cigarette butt towards her belly back in 2011. The last time I saw him was he was working at a cart stand at a mall in 2014. He asked me for my number. I told him I'd give it to him only if he was sincere. I gave it, and he never reached out. He told me at that point he had another kid with another woman. Whatever.
So, that's that. Thanks for reading and hope you don't condemn me too much in the comments.
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