Racial Profiling in Austria

It was 2 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon. Todrick and I were driving to my mom’s house. It’s a beautiful road along the lake where you have to go quite slow because the streets are narrow. Todrick was driving and always keeping the speed limit – in fact, he was even going a bit slower than the limit, and we were enjoying the ride. We had just had a wonderful breakfast and a long stroll along the lake. The car we were driving belongs to my grandfather. He lend it to us for a day. The drive to my mom’s house takes about 15 minutes. As we were already almost there – the last bit of the road is very narrow and steep – we noticed a black car behind us with one flashing blue light inside behind the windshield. Todrick was asking me if I knew these people, but I had no idea. I told him to drive on since the road was too narrow to stop and we were almost at the house. So we kept driving, the black car kept following and we all pulled up in front of my mom’s house. When the black car stopped right behind us in the drive way, it became clear that this was the police. Two guys jumped out, came to the driver’s window, showed the badge and yelled: “Polizei! Zulassungsschein und Fuehrerschein!” Todrick was looking at them, not understanding that they wanted to see the car papers and his driver’s license. The one guy then realized that Todrick doesn’t speak German, so he said again: “Polizia! Polizia!” which sounds like a mixture of Italian and Slovene to me, but I’m not sure. I only know that it’s neither German nor English. Anyway, I handed them the papers and the license, they looked at it for a second and then asked us to get out. I got out first, and they were wondering whose car this was. I explained it to them. Then they said they had been following us for 15 minutes, if I hadn’t noticed anything. What??? I must have looked at them like…??!!! Their excuse was that Todrick was weaving. Yeah, right! I looked at them with the same face because I couldn’t believe my ears. So they asked me if we had been drinking (at 2p.m.!). I said no, and was shaking my head in shock, as they were bending over trying to smell MY breath – and I was not even driving! Finally, they told me that Todrick is not allowed to drive somebody else’s car unless the owner of the car is inside as well. I said, fine, whatever, so I drive from now on. No big deal. They gave us back our papers and left.
When I told the story to my mom, she immediately assessed the situation right. The police was obviously undercover. They had been following us for two reasons, as my mom pointed out. One, they thought Todrick was African – who have the reputation of being drug dealers here in Austria – and two, because they wanted to see where we were going. Todrick was neither speeding nor was he weaving, which is why they didn’t pull us over before. When they noticed that we were going to a rather wealthy residential area, they must have been a bit confused. And when they saw that Todrick was a US citizen, they had to come up with something, and told us about this “law” that a foreigner is not allowed to drive somebody else’s car. I will look into this so called “law” and find out if this is even true.
Unfortunately, you can’t escape racial profiling anywhere it seems, and in fact it has gotten worse here in Austria as well. A new documentary called “Operation Spring” shows the situation of Africans and how the police and the Austrian law treat them here in Austria. Two young Austrian filmmakers finally decided to show the (sad) truth.