African American

tblue37

(66,035 posts) Wed Dec 28, 2016, 06:14 PM Dec 2016

Innocent black man paralyzed after being shot in the back by Fort Worth cops for no reason;

young black woman violently assaulted by cop and twice body slammed to the concrete in Walmart parking lot in Austin Texas--and then treated to a racist cop's claim that black people have violent tendencies and start 99% of violent incidents.

(X-posted to "General Discussion&quot

I was browsing The Guardian after reading an article and watching a video showing Fort Worth cops shooting in the back (and thus paralyzing) an unarmed black man as he walked away from them. I googled the man's name (David Collie) to read more about the case. As it turns out (surprise, surprise!) the cops lied and claimed he was lunging at them with a box cutter. (A witness says that he did not have anything in his hand and did not approach the cops.)

Guardian ARTICLE

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/28/police-shoot-black-man-video-david-collie-texas

YouTube video of shooting:

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At 14 seconds on in the video, we see Collie walking quietly toward a friend's house (he was coming home from work), and then at 27 seconds we see the cops approach him, guns already drawn, and at 29 seconds, as he walks calmly away from them, since he has no reason to think they have anything to do with him, the cop on the left shoots him. That is 15 seconds from the time we first spot him, and just 2 seconds from the time the cops approach him. They claim he lunged at them with a box cutter, but even if he had not been shot in the back while walking away from them, when in those 2 seconds would he have had time to lunge at them?

But while on the Guardian page where they post such stories, I found another one, with a horrifying video, about an incident that occurred 5 months ago. A black woman--a 112-pound 26-year-old school teacher--was approached by a cop who was going to ticket her for speeding. She pulled into a Walmart lot, probably because that was where she was going, since no article I've seen indicates that she even knew the cop was following her, since he didn't turn on his lights.

After barking orders at her and not being satisfied with the submissiveness of her response , the cop yanked her out of the car and slammed her to the ground so violently that I was startled into jumping and shrieking at the violence. She cried out repeatedly, begging to know why he is doing that to her, and the cop dragged her up by her arms pulled up high behind her back in a way that had to be incredibly painful. (He later tells another cop that he "jacked her arms up over her head&quot

Then he grabs her neck with a choke hold and slams her to the concrete again, even more violently than before--once again causing me to jump and yelp, because it is such a sudden, violent assault.

Guardian ARTICLE

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/22/austin-police-breaion-king-black-woman-arrest-video

YouTube video:
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At 1:11 he slams her to the concrete. At 1:23 he uses his hand to violently force her face down. At 1:34 he grabs her around the neck with his arm, choke hold style, and slams her even more violently to the concrete! (Notice that at 1:33 he even kicks her in the leg!) At 2:22 he lifts her up by her cuffed hands, forcing her arms up past the point of safety. It's a wonder he didn't rip her shoulders out of their sockets! From 2:24-2:35 he continues to pull her arms up high behind her back in an excruciatingly painful position as he forces her to walk forward.

And then, at 8:36, something incredible happens inside the police car as she talks to the other cop, a 15-year employee with the department. That cop asks why white people act like they are so afraid of black people, and Ms. King says that's what she wants to know, too. His response is so racist that even the Austin police chief was horrified by it <emphasis added to excerpt>.

"Why are so many people afraid of black people?" Spradlin asked King. “That’s what I want to figure out because I’m not a bad black person,” she replied.

“I can give you a really good idea why it might be that way: violent tendencies," Spradlin said. Prosecutors cleared King, a 26-year-old elementary teacher, of a resisting arrest charge after viewing the video of the June 15, 2015 arrest. The 112-pound woman told the local newspaper she has hired lawyers as she considers a suit against the department. “I’ve become fearful to live my life,” King said. “I would rather stay home. I’ve become afraid of the people who are supposed to protect me and take care of me.”

Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo announced at a press conference Thursday that he has removed both Richter <the arresting cop> and Spradlin from the streets as the department conducts an internal review. The probe will include both a criminal investigation and an administrative review into how Richter's supervisors arrived at the decision to give him the lowest level of discipline: counseling and training, he noted. The chief said he didn't know of Spradlin's comments, which he called racist, until local media began inquiring about it

“After reviewing both videos, I and our leadership team were highly disturbed and disappointed in both the way Ms. King was approached and handled and in the mindset that we saw on display in those videos,” Acevedo told the Statesman.

SNIP

Here is more of Spradlin's racist commentary, quoted in The Guardian article:

He continues: “I’m not saying anything, I’m not saying it’s true, I’m not saying that I can prove it or nothing, but 99% of the time, when you hear about something like that, it is the black community that’s being violent. That’s why a lot of the white people are afraid and I don’t blame them. Some of them because of their appearance and whatnot, some of them are very intimidating.”

OK, yeah, she was not lying face down on the (undoubtedly very hot Texas in the summer) concrete with her hands behind her back for cuffing as he demanded, but frankly, when he immediately became so violent after escalating for no reason what should have been a routine traffic stop, she was probably so terrified that her struggle became instinctive, a reflex response to an unprovoked assault. Especially as a small woman assaulted by a big, violent man--and as a black woman assaulted by the sort of cop who is known to brutally abuse and even kill unarmed black people--she probably was too terrified to calm down.

Shades of Sandra Bland: What led to his dragging her from the car and assaulting her was his fury that she was not as submissive as he wanted her to be. Like Sandra Bland, she dared to "talk back" to him. In Ms. Bland's case, the cop demanded (unreasonably) that she put out her cigarette while sitting in her own car. He wanted to escalate, so instead of giving her the ticket and ending the interaction, he deliberately needled her and made demands that would give him an excuse to escalate the interaction, rough her up, and arrest her.

In Ms. King's case, the cop came at her barking orders in an aggressive, disrespectful way. First he demanded that she get back into her car. In the articles I have read, it is not at all clear that she even knew at first that he was pulling her over for speeding, since he did not turn on his lights. He just approached her, barking orders to get back into the car. Probably the only reason she was out of the car is that she had reached her destination and was not aware that the cop was getting ready to ticket her. (Apparently he did not turn on his lights.)

Then he angrily demanded (not politely requested) that she put her feet in the car and close the door. In Texas in the summer, a stopped car is like an oven. Who would want to sit in it with the door closed?, When she didn't follow his orders fast enough to please him, he grabbed her to drag her out of the car. At this point she probably began to think she was about to get the Sandra Bland treatment, and from then on her reactions were probably instinctive, driven by terror and by a natural response to being so violently assaulted for no good reason.

Basically, the cop got really mad when she asked him to hurry up. That is so like what happened to Sandra Bland. She let the cop know she was irritated at being pulled over when she was just trying to let him get past her. In both cases, the cop decided to assert dominance by ordering the person around for no good reason other than to needle them and show them who was boss. And in both cases, when the woman questioned the unnecessary order, the cop used that as an excuse to drag her out of the car, and then to brutalize her, handcuff her, and arrest her for resisting arrest. Of course, there was no reason for arresting the women in the first place, and you cannot resist arrest unless you are under arrest for having done something to be arrested for. That (plus, of course, the awkward publicity over the abuse and the unjust arrest, and the jaw-droppingly racist comments by another officer) is why they dropped the resisting arrest charge.

This is what keeps happening to black drivers.They get targeted for DWB, so they have way more of those interactions with cops than white people do. Then what should be routine traffic stops get escalated by racist, bullying cops into a violent arrest and often into the serious injury to or even the death of the driver.

On Bill Mahr's Real Time, actor Wendell Pierce describes how quickly a cop goes from pulling over an unarmed, harmless black driver (usually to meet some ticket quota) to being ready to blow his brains out. This happened to Pierce as he drove home from his uncle's funeral. He was in a nice car, wearing a nice suit, with a cousin and two toddlers in the car with him, but the cop was on the verge of shooting him, even though he had done everything black drivers are taught to do to avoid scaring trigger happy cops into shooting them:

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[font color = "blue"][font size = "+1"]? Sorry this post is so long. I just get so steamed when I come across these articles and videos--and I keep coming across them pretty much every day![/font]