Thing about violent police interactions.

in #police3 days ago

I know that I spend a lot of time evaluating violent police interactions. I do that because the popular narrative is that any case wherein a white cop shoots a black man, or is rough with a black man, it's immediately evil, white racism. This has been the case since Michael Brown, which turned out to be a media lie, and an entirely justified shooting.

This is one of the cases that seems to fit the narrative to me.

The officer was told given a description of a white man becoming violent at the Circle K. The officer was told what the man was wearing. The officer spoke to an employee who pointed to the white dude as the person who she wanted removed and detained.

The officer then cordially talked to the white dude, whose behavior sparked the 911 call. The white dude lied, and said that a black dude was getting rough with him. The cop believed the white dude. The cop got back in his squad car and found a black man. The cop promptly jumped out of his squad car and tackled the black man.

Now, granted, the cop couldn't have known that the black man was deaf. He couldn't have known because the black man wasn't the person who prompted the 911 call, and he had no idea who the black dude was. He was just a black dude in the area. The officer also couldn't have known that the black dude was deaf because, unlike with the white dude, the cop escalated to physical force immediately with the black dude.

What's more, regardless of race, I understand methods of restraint the likes of which used on George Floyd and Eric Garner much more than I understand throwing punches and using a taser on a dude who is already prone on the ground.