Common cause
By Todd Foltz

We approached that smoky street corner from different sidewalks and separate lives, as police helicopters roared overhead and the sirens of emergency vehicles gave off haunting serenades.

Caught up in our own trepidations, neither of us became aware of the other until it was too late. Our paths had crossed. Our lives had intersected, here, on this corner in South St. Petersburg, Florida, on a day torn open by gunfire, arson and hatred.

There we stood, a black man and a white man, our eyes wide and our muscles tight, and the same question was reflected in both faces: Was this a neighbor, or was this an enemy? Had we met a day earlier, we may have spoken or nodded, commented on the World Series or the weather. Or we may have shrugged past each other without a second thought.

But not now. Not here. With one teen-ager dead and more than a dozen other people injured in the past few hours, neither of us could afford to ignore the danger the other represented. The man's fists were clenched. A club lay on the seat of my car some 15 paces away. A police community liaison center sat just across the empty street, and my eyes darted toward it momentarily. Or what was left of it, anyway. Arsonists had burned it down just a few hours earlier.

The man and I held each other's gaze for a year's worth of moments. In the morning, the city at large was going to have to face the harsh realities of poverty and anger and race relations, and the dialogue, when it would come, wouldn't be easy. But tonight, together, this man and I would have to come to terms with it individually.

When our words came, they came in unison.

"This isn't good," we said, simultaneously. Fleeting grins brushed our lips but skirted our eyes as we turned to view the charred building. We stood, shoulder to shoulder, and took in the scene like old men at a funeral, comfortable in shared pain but fearful of open emotion. We had found common ground in horror. It was enough for now.

Seven hours earlier, white St. Petersburg police officers had pulled over a car in what they referred to as a routine traffic stop. The car, though registered to an elderly white man, was driven by a 17-year-old black teen-ager with a police record. What happened next depends upon who you believe. And that, all too often, depends on such factors as race, class and past experiences with law enforcement authorities.

Police say the car lurched forward, making the officers fearful of being run down. An officer shot through the window, fatally wounding the driver.

Black witnesses say the driver had his hands on the steering wheel and did nothing to provoke the shooting. Residents of the area became angry quickly.

A crowd gathered at the scene and began chanting at the police. More police arrived, and so did more of the residents of this depressed, low-income area of the city. Someone began throwing bottles and bricks, and within a short time a major disturbance had erupted.

The man I stood next to several hours later and several blocks away understood the anger behind the demonstration. His name was James. A laborer in his mid-30s, he's lived in South St. Petersburg for about five years. Though he said he hadn't participated in the night's anti-police ­ and often anti-white ­ demonstrations, he said he had considered it.

This certainly wasn't Los Angeles in the days after the Rodney King verdict. Nor was it the Miami riots that started after a similar traffic stop shooting. But it was big enough. A state of emergency was declared. The National Guard would be brought in the next day. The official term for the night 's destructive activity was "civil unrest."

A police car and several homes and white-owned businesses in the area of the shooting were torched and looted, and firefighters trying to combat the blazes had to dodge bricks and bottles and epithets. Often, they had to wait in frustration as the building burned because it was too dangerous for them to move in to fight the fire. A few blocks north of the area, a post office was set ablaze.

And the authorities weren't the only targets of the anger. Mobs of people also set a television news van on fire and chased or bombarded white news people with bricks and rocks. There were reports of gunfire directed at circling helicopters.

Recalling the scenes of angry blacks pelting white people I had seen that evening on television, I felt anger rising. When groups like the KKK hold rallies, Americans refer to them as racist hate mongers. But when black mobs target whites, people talk of "racial tensions."

I looked at the man standing next to me, and perhaps James sensed my glare. He turned, and in his eyes I saw more flames, hotter and fiercer than any I had seen on television. These were the fires of anger and resentment, and above all, frustration.

"This isn't right," James said. "And a lot of these people out here tonight are thugs or stupid kids who're just stirring up trouble. But nobody listens otherwise. And the police don't treat blacks the same as whites."

The man was right, and I knew it. Rodney King and that Mexican couple in Southern California aren't isolated exceptions. I've seen sober, well-dressed black people walk down the sidewalk at night and get frisked by police for no apparent reason. Stunts like those breed resentment, and justifiably so. I've been frisked myself for no other reason than I have long hair and a leather jacket, so I can understand resentment of the police.

But that doesn't excuse someone for breaking the law. Whether or not the teen-ager was trying to run down the officer, he was in a car that didn't belong to him. Had he been driving a vehicle he owned and didn't have two warrents out for his arrest, would something like this have happened to him? Like most whites, I'd like to think not.

But there are a lot of black people out there who would disagree ­ some of them violently so.

Why are the views of blacks and whites so different in America? James had no answers on that smoky street corner. Neither did I. But we both had a willingness to talk about it. And that's a start.

Todd Foltz was the first person of the LCN St. Pete crew to learn of the disturbance. His dad had been watching CNN late Thursday and was worried about his son.

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