In December of
2014, a crazy man punched me in the face in a fit of road rage as I was on my
way to my last exam. I was driving on campus and another driver ran a stop sign
in front of me, almost hitting me and causing an accident. I honked and flipped
off the other driver as I drove past, and continued on to the building where my
final was. I noticed that this other driver was following me but I didn’t think
anything of it until he parked next to me and got out of the car when I did.
As I looked over he began to yell
and curse at me for giving him the bird. I told him that I did it because he
ran the stop sign and almost hit me and he did not have right of way. I also
told him that I had an exam and didn’t have any time. After this I began
walking away towards my exam and he ran up and punched me in the face. This
knocked me down and as I stood up I pulled my cell phone out to call the
police. As soon as he saw me take out my phone he ran back to his car and drove
away, so all I could give the police was his license plate number. After a
short call with the police I went to take my test and then to the UMBC Police
station to make a report. The next day I also went to the courthouse to press
assault charges and get a court date set.
Both
the UMBC Police Officer and Courthouse Prosecutor I talked to told me that they
would not recommend continuing with the charges because he would most likely
get nothing and I would waste a lot of time and effort. Fortunately for me, I
did not listen to their advice and I did get a court date set for April 1,
2015. The guy ended up getting a Probation Before Judgment, requiring that he
complete an anger management course and not have contact with me for 3 years in
order to evade a trial and potentially, becoming a convicted criminal.
The
injustices for me in this experience were the initial assault, the results of
the justice process, and the expectations of the officer and prosecutor. The
initial assault is of course an injustice because it is a crime to assault
other people unless in self-defense. The consequences for the man were also an
injustice because he never had to admit guilt or apologize to me. He actually
could not apologize to me because it would violate his probation agreement not
to contact me and because it would be an admission of guilt. However these were
not the worst injustices.
In
my opinion, the worst injustice was the expectations of the prosecutor and the
officer for nothing to come of this. To me, the fact that the very people who
work in the justice system are recommending for me not to use it because they
think it will not work, says a lot about the system as a whole. It means that
its problems are so big that even the people who work in the system and can see
them have no idea how to solve them. They would rather contribute to the
problem than admit there is a problem and work on a solution, or at least not
be part of the problem. This broken system creates a perpetual cycle of and
will continue to produce it until the
problems with the justice system causing injustices are solved.
People
need to believe and trust in the system to get justice or there will be no
incentive to report crimes over taking personal revenge. If this happens,
violence and personal revenge will become the societal norm for settling scores
rather than going to court. This type of society could lead to a state of
complete anarchy, and the United States could become a Somalia-like territory,
borderless and lawless. The fall of such a world power would spur other
countries to invade and claim colonies. The wars over claiming these colonies
would cause WWIII. Don’t let WWIII happen. Report all crimes, big or small, let
justice be your revenge. Don’t work for a broken justice system, work to reform
it to a working one; then work for that one.
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