Soundwave said:
Probably easy to feel this way when you've never been put in a position where a routine situation could lead to you getting shot. That dude who was choked to death by several officers for selling CDs on a street corner or the kid that was shot to death for wearing a hoodie while walking home or that other dude who was shot to death like 8 times in front of his daughter while simply reaching for his papers ... yeah if that happened to people who speicifically looked exactly like you, I imagine you might have a different POV in that scenario. |
It's very easy to say until you've been put in a position where a routine situation almost leads to you getting shot.
In the Fall of 2009, I was on my way from Tulsa to Oklahoma State in Stillwater with my girlfriend in the passenger seat and one of our friends in the back. We are all minorities. I got pulled over in Mannford for doing about 70 or 75 in a 55 mph thanks to a fucking speed trap that these backwater, podunk towns are known for where the speed limit can drastically drop in the blink of an eye.
So I pull over, I'm reaching for my wallet to get my license, I already have my window rolled down, and the next thing you know, two officers run up to each front window and point pistols right between our eyes and shout out us to put our guns down. I remember imagining my head getting blown off and imagining those two getting riddled with bullets for no fucking reason, and I just froze in place for what seemed like an eternity. My wallet was in my right side pocket and I was using my left hand to reach for it, and when I stopped being shocked enough to actually listen to the officer shouting at me, I told him what I was doing and that we don't have weapons, and that I was scared to move my hand for fear that he would shoot me.
He told me to slowly put my hands on the steering wheel, so I did. The other officer made her put her hands on top of the dashboard and our friend's hands in the air. They made us get out of the car one at a time, they patted us down, and then made us get behind it on our knees with our hands behind our heads, and remain there while they searched the car for guns and drugs, all the while we're staring down the barrell of guns pointed at us the whole time. They radioed for another car to come with a dog to smell for guns and drugs, all the while telling me that if I am hiding any, I better tell them now or suffer the consequences later. I keep telling them that they can search a thousand times and find nothing, and asking them to please stop pointing their guns at my friends. I can't remember why they said no, because all that mattered to me at the moment was that they wouldn't, and all that was running through my head was the image of them and myself getting shot for no fucking reason.
I'm going to spare all of the details because I've already made a giant wall of text, but we were on the side of that road for about an hour and a half, They eventually let us get off of our knees, and eventually stopped pointing guns at us. And they eventually told us their reasoning: they claimed that when I was pulling over to the side of the road, my friend in the back was scurrying to put on his seatbelt, and the silver buckle of the seatbelt looked like it could have been a gun from their point-of-view, so they couldn't take any chances. I could have been Trayvon Martin or Terrance Crutcher, or that guy in Baltimore over a fucking seatbelt. If I would have jumped when my hand was in my pocket, I and two other innocent college kids would have died over a fucking seatbelt. Want to know the irony in that? If you're 12 or older in the Oklahoma, you don't need your seatbelt on in the backseat; it's optional.
So if you've managed to read this far, I hope you can understand why I personally get a bit uneasy around an armed police officer, especially when I get pulled over (and if you want to hear more bullshit reasons for me getting pulled over, let me know. I have more). And I hope you can understand why an officer making such racist jokes isn't funny to someone like myself, no matter the context. I know it's personal and highly anecdotal, but you're delusional if you think this type of thing doesn't happen to people who look like me every single day.
As much as some of you like to cherry pick, you must get paid pretty well by the hour or something.... Let's look at some facts, shall we?
