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She keeps her cool, and there are very few people in the park -- maybe two whites; I'm the other. She's trying to pass him, and he won't let her. Doesn't stop her, doesn't touch her, walking back slowly so that she sort of has to walk slowly. But she smiles and handles herself very well. And as I'm walking through I'm saying to myself, “This is awful. I just can't walk out of the park if there's a confrontation between this woman and this guy and there are ten other blacks there. If there's an incident, I'm going to have to help her. I just can't walk out. On the other hand, I can't go over and say, “Is he bothering you, lady?’ because that might cause an incident. And thank God she isn't screaming and isn't hysterical at this moment and she's handling it very well by smiling and continuing to try to walk. But I can't walk away.”

So I sort of turn slowly, sort of looking at the park. I'm only about ten feet away from this couple. I just stand there trying to be inconspicuous. It's hard to be inconspicuous when there are very few people in the park and you've got a group of ten black guys and this one white woman and this black guy who's clearly trying to accost her -- and me. But I try as hard as I can to look uninvolved, and I just stand there, until she finally breaks away. Then I leave. And there are no cops in the park. That's what got me so goddamned upset that I wrote a zinging letter to Captain Fortune. And I told him this when I came and saw him at the precinct.

I don't happen to think this is racist, not at all, although there would be some people who would. They would say, “Why