THE PRIEST AND THE POLICE

[Col. Writ. 1/29/02]  

Copyright '02 Mumia Abu-Jamal

What happens when a deeply committed, religious person, a priest, comes into direct contact with a cynical cabal of cops?

This question is far from rhetorical.

A middle-aged man named Kobutsu Malone knows it's not rhetorical, for he is an American-born Zen Buddhist priest, and he came in direct contact with some cops recently.

It wasn't pretty.

As leader of the Engaged Zen Foundation (based in N.J.) Rev. Malone has put his Zen humanistic faith into practice in the darkest corners of the real world, by going into  American prisons, some as notorious as the infamous Sing Sing prison in upstate New York, to promote and sustain Zen practice and meditation.

In 1996, he served as Spiritual Advisor to a prisoner on Death Row in Arkansas, named Jusan Frankie Parker. Indeed, he waged a 6-month campaign on Parker's behalf, begging two successive Arkansan governors to commute  his death sentence to life in prison.  Rev. Kobutsu Malone's  efforts did not succeed, and he shared the last day of Parker  as the state committed a legalized lynching on August 8th, 1996, in Varner, Arkansas.

The experience left him deeply committed to the abolition of the death penalty, and led him to the frigid, rain-swept streets of Philadelphia, on December 8th, 2001, on behalf of this writer.  As a religious person and as an American citizen, he felt safe to come to a city that takes its name from the Bible, meaning "City of Brotherly Love," and the  place where the Constitution was written several centuries ago.  It was at 13th and Walnut Street, that he would learn about today's Philadelphia, and that the Constitution, nor his faith, meant nothing, at least to the armed men who claim their sworn duty is to serve and protect people.

After he heard some commotion behind him, at the rear of a march, he turned back when he heard people hollering about arrests, and then it happened:

        I was standing there for less than a minute on
        the edge of the crowd when suddenly, without
        any announcement or warning, a policeman
        rushed at me from my left side holding a
        nightstick diagonally in front of him.  I clearly
        saw his black gloved right hand and part of
        the wooden shaft of the nightstick as it came
        at me and hit me across the chest pushing
        me backwards.  I fell backwards onto the
        pavement and remember seeing stars and
        hearing a rushing sound as my head hit
        the pavement.  I lost consciousness.

When he came to, the 50-something priest would  find himself struggling to breathe, his face mashed into the wet concrete, a cop's meaty knee boring into  his back, while his arms were being wrenched behind him, only to be lashed together tightly by plastic bonds. Rev. Kobutsu Malone, who suffers from heart trouble,  would be violently rushed to a van, hoisted into it, and  when he found the breath to tell a cop that he was a priest, and could his bonds be loosened, one cop  sneered at his request, while another announced  Malone should be ashamed of himself, if he really  was a priest.

Meanwhile, Rev. Kobutsu, his arms numb from the tightened tourniquet which stopped circulation to his hands, tossed to and fro by the moving van, fell again into unconsciousness.

When he came to this time, cops were tugging at his vestments, and pulling him out of the van onto a stretcher.

The Rev. Kobutsu Malone was on his way to a  nearby hospital where he was given some rudimentary heart medication.

He saw several cops during his time in the hospital, and whenever he spoke to them they informed him that he was indeed under arrest, but when he inquired as to the charges, he was told repeatedly, that they didn't know what charges:

        I was not informed of my Miranda rights,
        nor told of any consequences of answering
        any questions.  [The detective] asked me 
        why I was there and I told him about my
        heart condition.  He then rephrased the
        question asking me why I was arrested.
        I was taken aback with this question and
        asked if I was indeed under arrest and what
        I was charged with.  He responded that
        they didn't know what I was arrested for,
        did not know what I was charged with and
        did not even know who placed me under
        arrest.
 

Hours later, when the charges were finally dropped,  he took his bruised and battered body and pysche and,  along with family and friends, put distance between himself and Philadelphia.  He learned firsthand, what  Philadelphia freedom was about.

He must have wondered to himself, in the early morning hours, if this can happen to me, a priest, an American, a  white guy (who happens to believe in Zen Buddhism) what of other people, who are younger, darker, or poorer?  And surely, a shudder must have moved through him.

Note: Ven. Rev. Kobutsu may be reached at www.engaged-zen.org

Text © copyright 2002 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

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