I cannot claim to know what it is like to be a black man, but I have seen many a video on YouTube and Cops and other vines captured by amateurs. I am always amazed how in the face of a police officer holding a gun pointing at you, you still want to argue your side with no regard for your own safety. From my perspective, once a cop pulls me over, all my attention goes to what he needs. I may be having a bad day, but I am not going to voluntarily pass my shitty attitude to a man holding a gun on his side.
There is a moment when the officer tries to get the attention of the person he just stopped (on most episodes of Cops) and Many many times the officer is confronted with more questions than he has asked. I always think "what?" just give the man your license and insurance, hands at 10 and 2, roll your windows down. Make the officer feel like he is in charge. But no, the lights inside the car won't turn on, the windows are tinted so the officer can't tell how many people are in the car, there is combative attitude, a lot of times there is cussing like the guy is just an idiot neighbor and not a man with the law on his side.
I saw the footage a couple times of this last one in Oklahoma, and it is a tragedy, the man died basically because his car broke down. I do not think he should have been shot, but from the video, I also did not see at any point that he tried to make friendly with the cops, he could have offered a handshake, explained his car was giving him problems. We see the cops yelling at him, and he just turns away and continues whatever he was doing. Maybe it was stressful with his car blocking the road, but the cops would have helped, at least to prevent another car from hitting him by having their lights on. How do you turn your back to someone who has a gun to you? There are social cues we need to understand, and a gun pointed at you should always be the most serious thing that can happen to you, and it should give you a pause and listen moment.
I know this sounds sexist, but if you are 5 feet tall and female, maybe you shouldn't be a police officer. I know society wants to force feed the thought that we are all the same, but we aren't. This female officer runs into this "scary dude" and for whatever reason she feels she needs to draw her gun, that was an odd response for a man who was having car trouble. I like my officers to be fit men who can pursue on foot, if necessary, maybe have some military training, strong enough to confront and disarm a typical man, maybe with a tazer gun. I don't know if the female officer got confused, but the video says the man was tazed, why did he also have to get shot? By the time she shot him, there were at least 4-5 other officers there, so she wasn't alone. He was being a little thick-headed by not listening to officer commands, but he also wasn't trying to fight them in any way we can see.
People complain when people are tazed and the fact that it is inhuman, but you can walk away from a standard shock, and if you are still feeling like fighting after getting shocked, then I say apply a couple seconds until the person decides he is done fighting. If you don't want your little Johnny getting into it with the cops, start teaching them that cops are the law and it should be Sir, yes Sir, and not "the fuck you want, Pig?"
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