Originally published at: Video: Cop unfairly grabs Black woman instead of white anti-masker who was harassing her | Boing Boing
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In other breaking news, water is wet.
Give cops even half a choice and they’ll fall over themselves to arrest and hassle the darkest skinned person on a scene.
Expecting otherwise is foolish. You can’t fix something this broken. Defund the police and try something else.
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“In this video her face has been blurred to match her voice.”
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Since he does quickly fix his mistake, I’m inclined to believe he really did just make a mistake. Especially since, just as he approaches, the black woman (understandably) has enough of Karen’s bullshit and takes a step forward with her hand up. The cop probably grabbed her more to try to de-escalate what looked to him like an about to be physical altercation.
This is by NO means saying the black woman was wrong and not excusing the white cop completely for making the mistake, but just allowing that mistakes can happen and it looks like he was quick to fix it once he realized it.
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No one is disputing he made a mistake, in the sense that he initially thought the black woman was the one causing trouble.
The reasonable assumption is that his mistake was based on racial profiling. That’s the kind of “mistake” that gets Black people killed by law enforcement all the time.
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It’s not “a mistake”; it’s generations of racial socialization to just assume that the dark complected person is automatically the problem.
That he admits the error in reasoning is irrelevant.
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That’s what the woman believes. What actually happened in the cops mind we don’t know for a fact.
We can guess based on past performance. Sure.
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What happens inside the head of another person is unknowable. We can only judge others by their actions.
This cop’s actions were consistent with a centuries-long pattern of racist profiling by law enforcement.
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It doesn’t matter; the historical context in relation to his observable actions, however?
That does.
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MSP has some great places to get really plastered.
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Aside from the actions of the cop, it’s kind of appalling how many people are wandering around in the airport, in close proximity to one another, without a mask. Is the vaccination rate that high in the MSP area??
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I’m a white dude, and I’m beginning to think being a white dude should automatically disqualify you from being a “law enforcement” officer. At least until white dudes don’t just white dude all over the place as soon as they get a badge and a gun.
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Just look at the two approaches too. The guy zooms in and drags the Black woman away and then gingerly walks you to the white lady after.
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Start a post about it, if you like.
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What total fucking bullshit. “The cop was confused.”
Yeah, he was confused – he thought he was doing his job, tackling a black lady who might have threatened a white woman, despite the fact that the white woman was having a meltdown and harassing everyone around. He remains confused, thinking he was clearly doing his job. He still feels it was downright wrong that he had to end up temporarily detaining and otherwise inconveniencing a white woman, but he avoided charging her so the law won out in the end.
Fuck this fucking fuck.
edit: I guess the summary says she (the screaming white lady) eventually was arrested. The news report video in the summary I thought said she was not. Now the airport and associated PD need to issue an outright apology, as a start.
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I suppose being on camera had zero to do with that.
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I mean, we do, though. It’s not like we don’t have studies showing that Americans, particularly cops, harbor unconscious racial bias. Not some cops, but all cops. Those studies get dismissed with, “Well, we don’t know how that translates to real-world actions.” We can’t then dismiss the actual actions with “Well, we don’t know what he’s thinking.”
That the cops essentially blamed a witness for this is total bullshit. Did the witness identify a black lady wearing a mask as the perpetrator? Fuck no, they obviously didn’t. Could the cop see that the woman he was man-handling was wearing a mask and therefore clearly not the person he was after? Yeah. Did he continue to man-handle her anyways? Yeah, he fucking did. Was he then behave completely differently with the white suspect? Yeah. There’s no room for “honest mistake” here.
On the individual level, it’s like climate change and specific extreme weather events. Extreme weather (mistakes, abuse) happen, and will happen even in the absence of climate change (racism), but climate change (racism) makes them far more likely and more severe, and causes types of events that never would have happened otherwise.
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To me it looks like he looks up and realizes that everyone is shouting at him and that he might be in trouble if he continues doing what he is doing. He doesn’t seem to have any awareness that a camera is on him. He doesn’t seem to have much awareness at all.
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This is selected for. As agencies elect not to hire potential police who score above a certain standard, and kick out cops who speak out against police misbehavior, they’re actively selecting for grunts who will not question groupthink.
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