Bureaucrats with Guns - Personal Edition

I like to walk on Saturday mornings.  My neighborhood abuts a social services agency, the Epworth center.  I often walk into the center and stand on the footbridge watching the stream.  This day it was rainy and I was cold so rather than walk back out of the center, I decided to see if there was a back gate. There was none so I walked back down to go out the front as I had done many times before  A man with a bushy grey beard was standing there, right in front of me talking on the cellphone.  I said hello, he said hello, we made small talk and I trudged homeward.  A few minutes later on Lockwood, our town's busiest street a policeman stopped me.  It seems that this grey bearded man from the Epworth center had called the police.

"What are you doing here?"
"Walking in my neighborhood"
"Do you have ID?"
"No, I'm walking in my neighborhood, I have a phone.  Why have you stopped me?"

He must have noticed my irritation at having an armed man stop me and fire questions at me because he said "stay right there", ran across the street and called backup - seeing that I was a 50 year old long time resident of Webster Park he must have figured anything could happen.  We're a notoriously violent bunch.

"Once again, why have you stopped me"
"Please take your hands out of your pockets, sir"
With hands out of my pockets, thinking maybe I should put them on my head, I asked 'my' police a third time:
"Why have you stopped me?"
"Epworth center called and said there was a strange man walking on the grounds"
"You mean the man that I stopped in front of and had small talk with?  Why didn't he ask me if he wanted to know what I was doing there?"
"I don't know, sir but it's a school and they have to be extra careful"
"Hmm, it's wide open, there are no 'no trespassing signs' and I've walked there a dozen times on the weekend without having cops called on me."
"It's just a school thing, sir, if you walked through the Webster High campus they'd call us too"
"Hmm, my kids go to Webster high, I'm there regularly, no one has ever called the cops on me there so I don't think that's true".

Dead silence.

Looking to be done with what had become an unpleasant and somewhat humiliating situation, I apologized for getting irritated and held my hand out to the Policemen.

They wouldn't shake it.  I guess I was too filthy for these public 'servants'.

I moved to Webster Groves because it is a community.  People treat each other well and we try to resolve our problems without recourse to police or courts or other forms of coercion.  This is what it means to be a good neighbor.

Clearly the Epworth Center did not behave like a good neighbor in this case.  Something to think about next time they come asking for money.

And the police, well certainly the police don't consider me to be their neighbor.  Like Epworth, they seem to consider me to be just another potential criminal, too dirty to shake hands with.  Something to think about when they come asking for money.

And I'm a 'respectable' white, grey haired 50 year old man.  Just imagine how the police must treat people that are young or the 'wrong' color for the neighborhood.