In other words, the Mayor sees the problem as being unable to tell the good law abiding citizens from the unlawful ones because of the transient nature of their living requirements. And in part he is right. But in another real sense he is wrong.
This is exemplified by the story of Zebedee Cobbs, a black man who lives in my city of Everett, Washington.
Zeb Cobbs is a model citizen. He has been in business since 1970 and owner of "Zebedee's" a hair salon business, at its current location since 1980. He is a member of the prestigious downtown Rotary club. He has been a church Deacon and a family friend most of my adult life.
But almost ten years ago, officers from the Everett police department accosted him. An article from the Everett Herald described it like this:
In 1995, he was subject to a dreadful indignity when police officers entered Zebedee's early one Saturday as Cobbs was opening his shop.
In a Herald article about the incident, Zebedee Cobbs was quoted as saying, "One of them kind of got next to me, and said, 'We just want to find out if you belong here or not.' I said, 'Yes, I own the building, I own the business, I've been in this town for 23 years.'
"They saw a black man from the road, and assumed I was going through the till and robbing the place," Cobbs said in '95. [1]
Zeb's daily routine when opening his shop was to count the money in the till. Two Everett Police Officers saw this, entered his business guns drawn and demanded that he identify himself. But the infuriating thing about this incident is that Zeb had been the owner of that business, at the time, for 15 years in the very same location.
Why didn't the officers on that beat know that? Why was Zeb treated as a threat in a town he had lived in for nearly quarter of a century? And why did Zeb, a longtime community member, get treated as a stranger like Michael Brown?
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