10 Seconds That Shifted Power

Pastor Adrian Rigg saw the blue and red lights reflecting off the glass in the bakery. Moments later she heard a commotion, and saw people moving hurriedly in that direction. Her curiosity caused her to leave the bakery and do the same. This was a decision that put her on the forefront of police reform around America.

As she opened the door a cacophony of shouts met her ears. The closer she got the more intelligible the noise became. But it wasn’t until she saw with her eyes, that understanding finally clicked in her ears. The police had a young man pinned against the ground; he was struggling for breath, and the crowd was shouting for them to let him up so he could breathe. Their requests fell on deaf ears.

Pastor Adrian Rigg shouted, “We’re giving you 10 seconds to get off him!”

She couldn’t believe she’d just said that. It just came out involuntarily. Not like a heart beating, or digesting food, or breathing, but involuntary like a mother that can’t swim, diving into a pool to save her struggling child because of an inner compulsion to save a life. 

“10.” 

She’d been a pastor in a majority black and latino neighborhood for a little more than three years, and even though people expressed appreciation because of her messages and pastoral care, she didn’t feel like she was making a difference. Not the kind of difference she wanted to make, not the kind her heroes made.  

She became a pastor because of people like the prophet Elijah, a man once accused of being the “Troubler of Israel.” Harriet Tubman, a woman that absolutely would not stand for unrighteousness. She put the fear of God into enslavers, and those who would remain enslaved for fear.

Jesus of Nazareth, of course, was on her list. How could he not be? Before she even understood the theological stuff she saw him as the original rock star! He was what happened when you put all of her heroes together in one, and then some!

She longed to join that group of troublemakers by standing up and confronting individuals or systems that were unrighteous. But she was a rule follower, and rule followers don’t make trouble. Indeed, the only trouble she could remember getting into recently was when Mrs. Jenkins pulled her aside in the receiving line because, “No woman has any business wearing a skirt like that, let alone a preacher!” When she got home she put the skirt that went beyond her knees at the bottom of her drawer, and hadn’t worn it since.

“9.” 

In the summer of 2020 something broke in her. But it would be wrong to focus on the breaking, because the next step was not to fix what broke. No, the thing that broke needed to be broken. Like the locks on the gates of the concentration camps, they weren’t just unlocked and opened, but they were broken and the doors were wrenched open never to be closed again.

This happened as she watched George Floyd being killed. She, an otherwise composed and quiet woman, began shaking and threw down her phone in anger and shame. Anger because she lived in a world like this and felt powerless to do anything; shame because she’d been living in this world and hadn’t done anything about it.

Sure, she and her husband did their best to raise their sons in a world where some people, including police officers, might think them suspicious simply because of their skin color. But even as she had those conversations, her own experiences suggested to her that this wasn’t really the case. She went along with it at her husbands suggestion. Also, “it couldn’t hurt,” she remembered thinking.

But as she watched George Floyd being killed, it did hurt. And the pain that she felt awakened something in her; anger and shame birthed resolve. Resolve to do what, she wasn’t entirely sure at the time, but resolve, nevertheless.

Now, a little more than a year later, here she was, not watching on her phone, but live and in-person as two police officers pinned a hispanic young man to the ground that was struggling to breathe.

“8.” 

Amid the shouting and commotion her voice and presence was quickly becoming the center of attention. That’s bound to happen whenever a countdown begins. Sheer curiosity causes people to stop and see what will happen. The attention made her anxious. Who did she think she was? What would she, a 5’6”, 33 year old woman, do to two fully grown police officers? 

Indeed, these were questions she’d been trying to answer since the day of resolve: “Who am I?” and “What can I do?” Pursuing the answers led her back to her heroes. None of them, except Jesus, were particularly anything greater than what she was. They were just human beings with faith and courage. They had an unusually strong belief that God was always with them, which led them to act like he was. But even there she was lacking. She understood these things conceptually, but not experientially.

“7.” 

As she said this her mind quickly raced back to 3 seconds ago. “Oh God!” she thought. “Did I start with I, or we?” It really wasn’t as fleeting of a thought as it seems. Her dad, a retired college basketball coach, taught her this trick to gain consensus. “Never make important work only about you,” he said. “You’re just one person. If you make it about us people will join you without thinking about it.”  

He said this after visiting her first church and hearing her say, “I’m gonna be serving in the food pantry this Wednesday. If anyone wants to take a slot you’re more than welcome to sign up.” Next time she said, “As you know, many of our neighbors count on us for food and other important items, so we’ll be opening up our food pantry again this Wednesday. There are several time slots available. Please sign up so that we can help put food on a hungry family's table.”

It worked. But did she start with “we” this time? She could not remember.

“6.”

This came out almost like a question, such was the shaking of her voice. If she stopped now maybe she could slink back home and create a good sermon out of this instead. 

One of the officers pointed at her and yelled, “ma’am you need to shut up and let us handle this.” Meanwhile the other still had Carlos (she found out his name when someone yelled, “Yo, they killin Carlos man!”) pressed hard against the pavement, outweighed by almost 100 pounds. 

As she reflected on how to become more courageous and confident, she remembered learning that courage and faith were like gardens; the best way to begin is with seeds you could manage to grow. She had a little experience with gardening when the pandemic began. So she applied the same approach to her life. After thinking long and hard about where she could begin, she decided that an easy starting point would be confronting people who made inappropriate jokes around her.

A few days later, during the churches Fall cleanup event, an older gentleman made an insensitive joke about women; Adrian opened her mouth, but said nothing, but the anger and shame appeared again. Dejected, she decided that she probably needed to pick a different starting point. Since, at least, she didn’t laugh uncomfortably as she usually would, she decided that this would be her new starting point. She would no longer laugh when people made inappropriate jokes.

The next opportunity came when a colleague of hers joked about ethnic sounding names. Right when she was about to give an empty, people-pleasing, chuckle, she remembered the garden she was trying to grow, and breathed, “God, help me,” and pursed her lips shut. The awkward silence that followed was like a bad odor in the room; but the seed had been sown.

After this happened a few more times (you see, people that tell inappropriate jokes know who they can tell them to without consequence), she discovered that she could, in fact, move to the next step and confront the person. When she told a neighbor that she shouldn’t be joking about “that stuff” and explained why, the neighbor became so uncomfortable that she sent an apple pie with another note of apology later that day. Her husband encouraged her to do it some more.

“5.” 

This time there were two voices! She looked around stunned, relieved!, eager to see who it was that joined the countdown towards… what?

It was a high schooler named Eli (could this be a sign?). She knew his name because he was one of the star athletes in town. The local teams weren’t good at all, but Eli always gave them a chance; or, at the very least, he would do something that would draw out a few “ooohs and aaahs.” Adrian felt like he was also giving her a chance. What was that old saying? “One can put away a thousand, two can put away ten thousand!” 

The officers still had Carlos pinned; his decreasing movement was unsettling the crowd even more. It was no secret that Carlos was in a bad way. He was known for stealing and lying, he’d dropped out of school, etc... He was under arrest now because he matched the description of a young man that broke into several cars over the last few weeks. When the police saw him and pulled over, Carlos took off! The curb in front of the bakery brought an end to the chase, as Carlos’s toe clipped it, and brought him down long enough for the police officers to catch him. 

Unwilling to go in without a fight, Carlos began struggling; this led to the officers pinning him on his stomach, yelling for him to stop fighting. But at some point he stopped fighting to be freed, and began fighting to breathe.

Between the countdown people continued shouting. Some shouted, “he ain’t even do nothing!” Others, “he ain’t struggling no more, get off him man!” Some of Carlos’s former classmates said, “It’s all good, Los, we got you!” As they filmed what could possibly be the next viral video.

The growing crowd made the officers nervous. Backup had not yet arrived and the crowd was now at 15 or 20 people. 

“4.”

Other voices now joined Eli’s, who joined Adrian. It turns out that the first follower is, in fact, very important. She still was unsure of what would happen after one, but now about half of them were committed to finding out.

The peace-loving part of her still wished that backup would arrive out of nowhere. Then the officers wouldn’t be so nervous, so fearful for their lives. Thinking of those words made her shudder and strengthened her resolve. “I feared for my life” was the constant refrain heard in courtrooms around the country. Words that officers would rehearse on the way to freedom.

“3.” 

Was that everyone that time? She was stunned by how loud that number rang out. 

There’s something about “3” in the countdown sequence that feels like the buy-in number, as if a threshold that guarantees action is coming. She learned that as a child when she diffidently let her mom get down to three when she was on the other end of a countdown. She got in trouble merely for allowing her to get so low. 

Now she and her curbside congregation were the ones counting down. As they passed that number of preparation there was no more screaming or shouting, just anticipation. Everyone wanted to see what would happen. 

“2.”

This came with such unity that one would be forgiven for thinking it was all staged. There was a single-mindedness to the way that number echoed forth. The “I feared for my life” excuse surely had some legitimacy now. But there was no turning back.

Adrian steeled herself, all the resolve in her body made its way to her mouth as the moment of truth drew near. She pursed her lips and began to say:

“1.”

She heard the number, but could not say it herself. Her entire body was paralyzed as 50,000 volts of electricity raced through it. She hadn’t noticed that one of the officers had a taser in his hand. Would she have counted down if she had known?

She felt herself falling to the pavement behind her, the only thing moving in her body was her quickening heartbeat. Her head banged against the hard surface and the pain of electricity stopped, along with everything else.

Later on that week as word of what took place spread like wildfire, News Reporters noted:

“Rev. Adrian Rigg, a 33 year old pastor of Bridgetown United Methodist Church, in Cincinnati, OH, died earlier this week. Multiple videos show pastor Rigg telling two officers who had a suspect, 19 year old Carlos Canales, pinned down in a way that could’ve restricted his breathing, that they had 10 seconds to get off of the suspect. As you see from the video the whole crowd soon joined her, and one of the officers fired his taser at her. Pastor Rigg suffered a heart attack and a concussion after her head bounced off the pavement. Paramedics could not revive her. At this point nobody is sure what she planned on doing, but witnesses report that this was not an organized event. No weapons were found on Adrian Rigg’s body. While the citizens of Bridgetown and people across the world grieve, the investigation will continue. Rev. Adrian Rigg is survived by a husband and two sons.”

A few weeks later in a lower class neighborhood, in Chicago, IL, 4 police officers were seen repeatedly punching a man while trying to restrain him. A store owner emerged from his store as he saw the gathering crowd and heard the commotion. He saw the punches being thrown and realized what was happening. He joined the crowd in shouting, “You ain’t got to do him like that. It’s 4 against 1. Stop telling him to relax, you the ones that need to relax!” 

One officer shouted, “All of you need to back up now and give us space or you will be charged!”

The store owner, still gripped by a video his grandson showed him of a white woman standing up to police brutality, replied, “Son, we’re giving you 10 seconds. This don’t need to go any further.”

The officer replied, “Sir, let us do our jobs! Back up or you will be charged.”

Right after that, the officers heard a cohort of voices saying,

“10.”