Let me start by saying two things. 1) I’m no fan of police. Except for my lovely sister who graduates police academy next month. 2) If you run from police, I generally think you deserve the ass-kicking that usually follows.
Those are my disclaimers. Now let’s talk about South Carolina. The Department of Justice is investigating the South Carolina State Patrol after a series of incidents that have raised questions of racism and police brutality (here’s the background, and here’s the background in case you don’t like to read). A pair of videos started the process. Fortunately for you, loyal reader (yes, singular… I’m humble) I have the videos here:
These two are easy enough. Yes the suspects ran from police, but police easily went way over the line. In the daytime video, the cop put a whole neighborhood full of bystanders in danger. Hear some of their accounts here.
But these aren’t the only videos. The problem is, the rest are a little less cut-and-dried. Three more tapes were released today. Story and video links here. Go watch the video links because I’m about to talk about them and I want you informed on the details. I’ll wait…
Okay then. In one, a gang of police cars chases down a guy in a truck. He finally pulls over and a trooper kicks him two or three times. Excessive yes, but see disclaimer #2 at the beginning of this post. Same thing in the second where the officers chase down a guy who ran and one of them punches him.
Now the third, I will defend the cop. He’s by himself, two guys in a truck run from him. When he finally stops them, he’s outnumbered. He points a shotgun at the suspects as he gets them on the ground. One of them he pokes in the back of the head while getting him to the ground. This I’m not mad at in the slightest. You’re outnumbered 2-to-1 and if you don’t get them both under control they could beat your ass or kill you. A mild poke with the muzzle of a shotgun sounds like about the right amount of force under those circumstances.
Now that we’ve talked about those, let’s discuss some other of the South Carolina State Patrol’s greatest hits. In the next video, you’ll see a suspect run from a cop and you’ll hear the officer clearly say, “You better run nigger, cause I’m fixin to kill you.” Check it out for yourself.
This to me is a classic case of someone’s true feelings being exhibited in a stressful situation. I’m not saying the officer committed any sort of brutality, but I am saying you have a racist officer that needs to be dismissed from any position that allows him to police minorities. Yes, I realize that means he won’t be a cop anymore. Boo hoo.
In the next festive moment, a state patrol officer leaves a woman stranded on the highway in the middle of the night after arresting her husband on drug charges and confiscating their car.
Shouldn’t he have waited until the woman could call a ride. He’s not accusing her of having done anything wrong. But he stranded her on a dark highway. Would he have done that if she were a pretty white woman? I have my doubts.
Next, a trooper handcuffs a lady to the bumper of his car while he searches her vehicle (video here). He didn’t beat her, curse her, or anything like that and I realize he had to make sure she was secure before he turned his back on her. But come on!!! Isn’t that what the backseat of his patrol car is for?
The last example from South Carolina involves a trooper who tased an uncooperative woman during a traffic stop. Check it out here. The lady is ridiculous. I give you that. She fully deserved to be restrained, shoved up onto the side of her vehicle, cuffed and arrested. This is a case where the tools available to the police made the perceived brutality virtually unavoidable. If all the officer had was a gun, he probably would have either restrained and cuffed the lady, or simply waited on some back-up. As it were, he had a stun gun. He displayed considerable patience, but still shouldn’t have tased the lady. She wasn’t going anywhere. Of course, if he had pushed her onto the hood of the car and cuffed her, we’d be roasting him for beating up on a woman.
Now that we’ve seen and read about the bad, I want to change the pace and bring you a little comic relief. Last but not least I am going to leave you with the coolest cop I’ve ever seen making a difficult traffic stop and maintaining every last bit of his cool. Prepare yourself, you are about to laugh harder than you ever have. 90% of cops would have beaten, tased, or shot this suspect a dozen times over. Kudos to the Maine State Patrol.
