I am a member of society, just like anyone else. Only now I have become a victim of the institutional branding that stigmatizes human beings to be treated like animals, labeling us as unworthy of grace and mercy, seeding the thought that we are all undeserving of compassion. I am a loving father and uncle, brother, and more, committing my life to finding my way positively through this judgmental climate hellbent on being unforgiving to the disenfranchised.
My current sentence is being served for convictions of malicious wounding and assault on an officer, but I am so much more than my conviction and my actions that fateful day were so much less violent than that sounds or the punishment I’ve received warrants.
I have a history of mental health problems dating back to childhood, with a peaceful, respectful nature almost all the time but the ability to be thrown off and defensive when I feel I’m being attacked. This conviction is the result of such a situation, where I was having a minor breakdown related to personal issues. I was seeking help from the authorities at that time. Instead of help, those without crisis intervention training entered the situation, flouting the aggressive mindset that officers often bring. I had hurt no one, though I was agitated. The situation snowballed out of hand after they left me feeling attacked, and I tried to leave. At that point, a volunteer firefighter–not a police officer, not wearing any uniform, not an authority–decided to make a citizen’s arrest of his own volition. He tackled me, and I was now distraught and believed a stranger was physically assaulting me, so I struggled to flee. In the process, I bit him and he ended up with a few scratches and abrasions. No major injuries, no need for serious medical treatment, nothing permanent, not even stitches.
Yet I was charged with malicious wounding, which is meant to represent an attack of most severe and aggressive violence, and assault on an officer, which they credited this plainclothes, unidentified, volunteer firefighter who tackled me out of nowhere. I received over 12 years of incarceration without any serious harm, no history of violence, after merely struggling to escape after a stranger jumped me during a mental health emergency. They have, years later, never even fully adjudicated whether I was sane at the time of the offense.
Where is the justice for me, Rydell McKeith Pettaway? Where is it for my son, or for my grandmother who raised me and nearly died from COVID earlier this year while I was unable to help her? I guess once we’re demonized by the system, it is set in stone forever.
I am not a plague to society. I am an asset. I avoid all trouble here, even in a violent, repressed, anti-intellectual setting where I can receive almost no counseling. I manage to read, learn, and spend time with the positive people I can find. When the high ups see our value and invest in us instead if sweeping us under this concrete rug, we can fix so many deeply ingrained problems. We’re not going away. This is not the end of our lives. We still seek and find hope!
Yet that would be so much easier and effective if we were considered more than our convictions which so often exaggerate the mistakes we have made.