When Eric Broyles was nine years old, recklessly riding a bike through his Hamilton, Ohio, neighborhood, he had a tense encounter with a police officer: he fell off his bike, sending it rolling into the street, nearly hitting a passing police car. In response, the officer chastised him, using a racial slur.
Broyles, now an attorney, wrote about the incident — one of two unpleasant police encounters that he details — in his new book, “Encounters With Police: A Black Man’s Guide to Survival.” “I was stunned,” he wrote. “I was so terrified because I did realize that I could have been run over and then I was mortified by the police officer’s racial slur.”
Those experiences, as well as the recent spate of high-profile police shootings, inspired Broyles — who co-authored the book with his friend, Adrian Jackson, a 25-year veteran of an Ohio police department — to provide African-American men a guide for handling their own interactions with police. Below, he reflects on recent shootings, the reasons why police encounters escalate, and why his book’s message, “comply now and contest later,” couldn’t be more relevant.
What made you want to write this book?
Related: An Homage to “Cecil”.