Faith Ekakitie’s experience with police should give us faith
IOWA CITY, Iowa – Some of the best news stories are ones that don’t really happen.
We’d probably still be unaware of the terrifying situation involving Iowa football player Faith Ekakitie if he hadn’t posted his experience on Facebook.
It might have leaked out by now on social media, but the story became far less important from a news standpoint from the moment Iowa City police officers realized that Ekakitie wasn’t the bank robbery suspect for whom they were pursuing.
A potentially tragic case of mistaken identity instead turned into a false alarm.
It was more than that, though.
Ekakitie’s encounter with police is also an inspiring example of how to diffuse a situation using professionalism, poise and restraint.
That isn’t enough from a news standpoint to bring the national media to Iowa City like a tragedy would have.
But it shouldn’t be dismissed, either.
Ekakitie’s experience has weighed heavily on me since he shared his feelings on Facebook. I’ve thought about how close we were to possibly being the scene of our nation’s latest violence and racial unrest caused by police officers shooting an unarmed black man.
I’ve thought about the terror and helplessness that Ekakitie, who is black, must have felt as he stared down the barrel of guns pointed directly at him by police officers.
And I’ve thought about the police officers and the stress and confusion they must have felt under extremely difficult circumstances.
Police were searching at the time for a bank robbery suspect who was described as a large black male wearing all black with something on the top of his head.
That is when police crossed paths with the 6-foot-3, 290-pound Ekakitie.
Here is Ekakitie’s description of what happened that he posted on Facebook.
“As they drive past an Iowa City park that was less than 3 minutes away from the bank that was just robbed, they notice a large black man, dressed in all black, with black goggles on his head. They quickly move to action and identify themselves as the Iowa City police and ask me to turn around and place my hands up. I do not comply, they ask again, and again no response from me. So they all draw their guns and begin to slowly approach the suspect.
“In this situation, what the media would fail to let people know is that the suspect had his headphones in the entire time the Police Officers approached him initially. The suspect had actually just pulled up to the park because he was playing a newly popular Game called Pokémon Go. The suspect didn’t realize that there were four cops behind him because his music was blaring in his ears. The suspect had reached into his pockets, for something which was his phone, but for all the cops could have known, he was reaching for a gun. The suspect could very well become another statistic on this day.”
Thankfully, this story has a happy ending, largely because the Iowa City police officers kept their composure and showed constraint.
Ekakitie wrote that he felt fortunate to be alive after the incident because he knew it was a misunderstanding that could’ve escalated very quickly for all the wrong reasons. He knew the circumstances had tragedy written all over them with police searching for a large black man and with him not initially responding to police orders.
And yet, cooler minds still prevailed on a day when the oppressive heat and humidity added to the stress and discomfort.
Ekakitie, who grew up in Canada, thanked the Iowa City police for handling a sensitive situation “very professionally." He also urged people to be more aware of their surroundings because he wasn’t on that day.
He then finished his Facebook post by pleading for society to unlearn some of the prejudices that we’ve learned.
That will take time, but every little bit helps.
We live in a time when tragedy is almost like our co-pilot, steering us from one human disaster to another.
But the good still far outweighs the bad.
For every rouge police officer who acts as judge, jury and executioner, there are thousands who follow the rules and who don’t make judgments based on skin color.
I felt that way before Ekakitie’s scary encounter with police, but more so after it.