An Immigrant’s Primer in U.S. Justice, Law of the Jungle

Those of us born in the USA tend to forget that immigrants often see America in an idealized way, holding the country up to a standard that’s not easy to maintain. Character flaws that we native-borns have come to accept sometimes strike the immigrant as betrayals of everything that made America special in the first place.

That’s a roundabout way of setting up Anaheim truck driver Piotr Mrugalski’s recent experience with his daughter’s high school administrators and the police.

In his native Poland, Mrugalski was a member of Solidarity, the political movement that upset the Communist government so much it was banned in 1981. In 1983, Mrugalski says, government officials gave him a passport and told him to go to any country he wanted, and not to worry about coming back.

He chose America, and in his fractured English, he explains why. “I came here because I’m thinking all the time, U.S. is best country to live in, U.S. got the best laws and U.S. going to protect you if you live here.”

Well, that’s a nice thought.

Last month, Mrugalski’s stepdaughter, 16-year-old Eva, got into a fight after school with another girl. According to Mrugalski, his daughter doesn’t know how to fight and was goaded into it by the other girl and some of her friends. His Polaroid photos of his daughter suggest he’s right about her not knowing how to fight: One of her eyes was bloodshot and reddened, and her face sported numerous bruises.

School officials, after taking various statements from the participants and bystanders, suspended both girls for five days. Mrugalski says Anaheim police said pursuing the case probably wouldn’t be worth the trouble.

All of which has Mrugalski seeing red. “I tell them, I’m not accepting that thing (suspension notice). I didn’t come to United States to get my children beat up very much. I came for freedom and I came for truth in this country, and I didn’t get it. That doesn’t mean I don’t like this country; I like this country very much.”

Mrugalski said school officials should have looked at the records of the girls involved and reached a “common sense” decision about who instigated it.

I asked how he knows his daughter didn’t provoke the fight. “First of all, my daughter, she don’t know how to fight. That’s a first of all. So I don’t think she will be ask for get beat up, if she don’t know how to fight. Now, what I going to do, I going to find for her good karate school.”

School officials didn’t return my call, but my guess is they probably had difficulty sorting out what really happened and, so, did what they thought was the fair thing: suspended everyone involved in the fight. Mrugalski will have none of that: “If one student going to be troublemaker, all students going to be suspended? That the socialistic way, I think, not democratic way.”

What should have happened? “In my country, somebody get beat up on the street, even when the socialists were in there, they going to get that guy, believe me. That’s why we have law. The problem is, if the government and police abandon young people like my daughter or another family’s son or daughter, if they get beat up on the street and police not pursue and help them work it out, we’re going to get another Los Angeles in here. Because those young people think, hey, the police don’t do any good for us. How about if we get pepper spray, take guns to school and we go to defend ourselves . . . we going to learn karate or judo and we going to get a Wild West.”

We all understand Mrugalski’s distress, but to those of us not so idealistic about American society, we know an after-school fight is small potatoes. Mrugalski’s vision is of justice; we know it doesn’t always work that way.

“We proud of our children,” he says, pointing to some framed certificates in the living room attesting to their children’s school achievements. “We don’t have those problems with them. They good students, they attend to school all the time, excellent records. My daughter comes from school to home, she takes care of younger children. We work hard. I’m a truck driver, my wife works in old folks’ hospital. She works at night. We work for those children to get them better education, teach them how to behave, teach them don’t lie to the government, because anytime you got problems, trust the Police Department. How I going to tell my daughter now she trust the Police Department?

“I’m not saying U.S. is bad. I think some systems, like schools, like police--they not maybe bad, they ignoring. They ignore hard-working people to help them out if they have any kind of problem. That gives them (residents) in the future, right to take law in own hands. If I’ve been abandoned by my government and my children are abandoned by the government, my feeling is take law in my own hand.”

Mrugalski is not so idealistic about America anymore. “I have to prepare my kids to teach them in different way. How to defend themselves, first of all, in very bad situation. That’s what I going to teach them in America. Then I’m going to teach them respect for another one and to ignore. If it verbal talking, ignore, or come home and talk about it, then maybe we can protest the situation.”

Eva hasn’t attended school since the incident on March 22. Mrugalski says she’s afraid of retaliation from the other girl and is transferring to another high school.

“She afraid and I afraid. We scared to get retaliation. Maybe one time I go to receive phone call from school, ‘Go pick daughter up from the morgue.’ ”

Now that a few weeks have passed since the incident, Mrugalski is somewhat more philosophical about it. I ask him if it wasn’t just a case of “Kids will be kids.”

“They say, ‘kids will be kids.’ What that mean? That kids take guns to school? Will they still say then, ‘Kids will be kids’ ?”

As if to reassure me as I leave, he says, with a smile. “Don’t worry. I’m not wacko. I’m not get gun.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.