This is a case you might find interesting. A 69 year old black librarian was pulled from her car by her hair and had her arm broken by a white officer after going 10 miles per hour over the speed limit.
She ignored multiple marked patrol cars for 10 miles and only came to stop after her tires were spiked. She was pulled forcibly from the car by her hair but once cuffed no further force was used.
It probably wasn't necessary to drag her from the car and cuff her forcefully, But i don't know if the officers could reasonably be expected to know that.
Many years ago, I rode along with the Austin police for a semester as part of a law school program. It required frequent ride alongs every week.
The police I rode with were probably picked for the program to present a good image, but the calls they got were not screened. There weren't enough police on the force then to keep the ride along cars away from real policing. Most calls I saw were around the campus (students), downtown (business workers, partiers/drunks, and vagrants), and East Austin (black and Hispanic). The cars I rode in also took some I-35 traffic and speeding calls, but not many. Maybe they wanted us to see policing more than traffic enforcement. I know they saw the ride along program as an opportunity to show future lawyers about policing and police issues.
It didn't take long for me to feel the constant stress. Calls could be very easy one minute and deadly dangerous the next. You never knew when or how the danger would present itself, but you knew it would come at least once each shift. It wasn't a black or white or Hispanic thing, either. It could happen anywhere, anytime, with anyone. It is hard not to carry that with you to every call.
I am certain training and resources help prepare police to deal with this, just as I am certain there are racist police. But my feeling is this is a job that makes it easy to have a bad day.
There was no lawsuit? Then we really don't know what happened, and must assume the fellow is telling the truth in order for your point to be valid [although i happen to agree with it]. And black men and women aren't just talking about altercations that wind up with shootings, as you well know. But my bottom line isn't race with these things; its: "Who the hell is hiring these people, and is it that hard to find stable people who want to collect pension number one after 20 years? And why are the unions defending the Chauvens in their ranks, who cause riots that can get their members killed?"
Excellent and frustrating article. This is an issue that seems to have been getting steadily worse, hardening hearts, and takes a lot to carefully reason through.
A couple of observations, not about this particular incident, just my experiences in general vis-a-vis police and other law enforcement types:
1) I flew A-10s for almost 20 years in the USAF. We didn't have a lot of black Hog drivers at the time but I was lucky enough to be in the same squadron as one, one of the nicest (and funniest) guys I even met in the Hog community. He had the rather unusual habit of wearing his full survival vest whenever he flew...hardly any of us did that--too bulky, hot and generally a pain--but Donnie did. Always. Since our base was in central Louisiana, our operating area was basically Louisiana, Mississippi and occasionally Arkansas. (The Mississippi part is important.) So, curiosity getting the better of me I asked him why. He told me two stories:
First, he had just graduated from college, was a newly minted 2nd Lt., and was driving through Alabama enroute to his assigned training base...in his Corvette...when he was pulled over by a cop (can't remember if he was a State Trooper or local sheriff) and was essentially arrested for "driving while Black." The thing that got my attention was Don remembered it vividly because the cop didn't even let him exit the car in the usual way; he (Don) was PULLED OUT THROUGH THE WINDOW. They assumed he stole the vehicle.
Terrified, he ends up at the station where he is given a chance to make the obligatory one phone call. Not knowing what to do, he calls the Training Wing he's been assigned to and the operator (bless her heart) puts him through to the Wing Commander. That's not normal and it kinda reaffirms my belief in God. Anyway...the Wing King listened to Don and, after a moment, said, "Put the officer on the line." Don hands the phone to the nearest cop who then gets to listen to a furious senior officer who, through gritted teeth, basically threatens the yahoo with an airstrike if he doesn't "let my person go." Of course, that wasn't possible, but the Colonel correctly assumed this knob wouldn't know that and fairly shortly thereafter Don is on the road again.
Second story: Don's grandfather was the first Black person in his Mississippi hometown to own a car. This was in the 1920s or early 30s, I think. One day he parking the car next to the curb in town and happens to bump into, at .0000001 mph, a white woman standing in front of his spot. Complete accident, nobody hurt. A crowd sees this, pulls him from the car, and lynches...the car. They wrap a chain around the front bumper and hoist it up a nearby tree.
So now back to question to Donnie about the vest. His answer (I paraphrase, but only a little), "If my jet has a problem and I need to punch (eject) over the Mississippi training area, those f***ers" ain't gonna take me alive. I'm going to E&E ("escape and evade") back here and all the s**t in the vest will come in handy." After the two stories, I didn't even laugh. Made perfect sense to me.
2) While on staff assignment as a Major I spent a lot (2.5 years) of time with the DEA. Long story but suffice it to say the DoJ tapped the DoD quite often in the 80s and 90s to garner any goodies and training for the drug war down South (by "South" I mean south of the US border). Met a lot of Agents and was impressed with them for their courage, ingenuity, ability to operate under insane pressure and their generally very large cojones needed to infiltrate and undermine the cartels. But one conversation got my attention where a seasoned argent, without a hint of humor, told me he only recognized two kinds of people: other cops and "perps." If you weren't one, you were, by definition, the other. You just hadn't been caught yet if you were of the non-cop persuasion. It brought home to me how cynical one can get if he spends his life up to his armpits in human depravity. And it tempered my up to that time reflexive respect and admiration for cops in general. Make no mistake, they still have my respect and admiration, but it isn't automatic or assumed and I am very careful when dealing with them...which is vanishingly rare and usually in a non-field setting (like going through security at the County Courthouse to pay property taxes, or whatever).
3) There are YouTube videos of cops going absolutely apes**t during a traffic stop when said cop is told by the person stopped that they are carrying and have a permit, I think the grossest one I saw was in Ohio and the guy stopped was white. So, while this case seems to be straight-up racism, I dunno, maybe not as open-and-shut as it may appear. Okay. I'm not naive, but there are badge wearers out there who have utterly lost their sense of perspective and/or proportion, thanks to the environment they are immersed in 8+ hours per day. Add to that mix a person with a tenuous grip on civility, maturity, equality or even humanity, and hoooo boy...color may be more an exacerbating factor than the prime one. In any case, there is no excuse for what that Trooper did. None.
Circa 1990, I was pulled over by two LAPD officers. I was asked for my registration and license, as usual in a stop. I gave them to the officer, and then I did something stupid. It turned out not to cause a problem, but it certainly could have. I had just come from a fast-food burger place and I had a bag of burgers and fries on my passenger seat, and had been eating fries on my drive home. Not thinking, I reached into this bag and pulled out a few more fries. I saw a second officer, who for some reason had gone to the passenger side, tense up and realized my error. Luckily he saw the fries, but I refrained from that point in reaching into the bag again.
It turned out that I had been pulled over because my plates were on the hot list (the car had been stolen and returned several months earlier). When they told me this, I realized just how bad an idea it was to reach into that bag of fries. If I had been black (which was NOT unusual in that neighborhood), would the story have a different ending?
They gave me a ticket for rolling a stop sign, which might have been true or might just have been a pretext for the stop, and told me to go to the DMV and change the plates.
told that my plates were on the hot list, and they really want3ed to see my registration and license.
So, a few take-aways. I live in a state now where the ONLY time I need to get any form of state approval for a handgun is if I intend to carry it on my body concealed. I can buy a gun and keep in my glovebox without any paperwork at all. No registration, no CCW. If I were to do that (which I consider unwise), I would probably tell an officer that I had a weapon in my glovebox before opening it, or even reaching for it, and ask him how he wanted to proceed -- never taking my hands off the steering wheel.
But it occurs to me this makes the interaction awkward and introduces danger to the officer and, hence, to me. I think the actual takeaway is: unless you have a real need for carrying a weapon like that, don't.
I must be honest and confess that as I read your piece prior to you revealing the actual race of the cop and motorist, that I reflexively assumed the cop's harsh interaction was racially motivated. So pervasive is that narrative(white perpetrator/black victim) in the media, that I have to a certain extent have developed(though certainly nowhere near as much as many leftists)an instinctive tendency to assume race is an issue in police interactions where the cop is white, and motorist black. So your column definitely provoked a lot of thought, as it challenged some of my instinctive assumptions regarding race that I thought I didn't really have.
https://www.wbtv.com/2021/04/21/nc-police-grabbed-year-old-librarian-by-hair-badly-injured-her-lawsuit-alleges/
This is a case you might find interesting. A 69 year old black librarian was pulled from her car by her hair and had her arm broken by a white officer after going 10 miles per hour over the speed limit.
She ignored multiple marked patrol cars for 10 miles and only came to stop after her tires were spiked. She was pulled forcibly from the car by her hair but once cuffed no further force was used.
It probably wasn't necessary to drag her from the car and cuff her forcefully, But i don't know if the officers could reasonably be expected to know that.
Interesting to see how the court case goes.
Many years ago, I rode along with the Austin police for a semester as part of a law school program. It required frequent ride alongs every week.
The police I rode with were probably picked for the program to present a good image, but the calls they got were not screened. There weren't enough police on the force then to keep the ride along cars away from real policing. Most calls I saw were around the campus (students), downtown (business workers, partiers/drunks, and vagrants), and East Austin (black and Hispanic). The cars I rode in also took some I-35 traffic and speeding calls, but not many. Maybe they wanted us to see policing more than traffic enforcement. I know they saw the ride along program as an opportunity to show future lawyers about policing and police issues.
It didn't take long for me to feel the constant stress. Calls could be very easy one minute and deadly dangerous the next. You never knew when or how the danger would present itself, but you knew it would come at least once each shift. It wasn't a black or white or Hispanic thing, either. It could happen anywhere, anytime, with anyone. It is hard not to carry that with you to every call.
I am certain training and resources help prepare police to deal with this, just as I am certain there are racist police. But my feeling is this is a job that makes it easy to have a bad day.
There was no lawsuit? Then we really don't know what happened, and must assume the fellow is telling the truth in order for your point to be valid [although i happen to agree with it]. And black men and women aren't just talking about altercations that wind up with shootings, as you well know. But my bottom line isn't race with these things; its: "Who the hell is hiring these people, and is it that hard to find stable people who want to collect pension number one after 20 years? And why are the unions defending the Chauvens in their ranks, who cause riots that can get their members killed?"
Excellent and frustrating article. This is an issue that seems to have been getting steadily worse, hardening hearts, and takes a lot to carefully reason through.
Good article as usual. Thank you for sharing.
*Sigh* I hate reading stories like this.
A couple of observations, not about this particular incident, just my experiences in general vis-a-vis police and other law enforcement types:
1) I flew A-10s for almost 20 years in the USAF. We didn't have a lot of black Hog drivers at the time but I was lucky enough to be in the same squadron as one, one of the nicest (and funniest) guys I even met in the Hog community. He had the rather unusual habit of wearing his full survival vest whenever he flew...hardly any of us did that--too bulky, hot and generally a pain--but Donnie did. Always. Since our base was in central Louisiana, our operating area was basically Louisiana, Mississippi and occasionally Arkansas. (The Mississippi part is important.) So, curiosity getting the better of me I asked him why. He told me two stories:
First, he had just graduated from college, was a newly minted 2nd Lt., and was driving through Alabama enroute to his assigned training base...in his Corvette...when he was pulled over by a cop (can't remember if he was a State Trooper or local sheriff) and was essentially arrested for "driving while Black." The thing that got my attention was Don remembered it vividly because the cop didn't even let him exit the car in the usual way; he (Don) was PULLED OUT THROUGH THE WINDOW. They assumed he stole the vehicle.
Terrified, he ends up at the station where he is given a chance to make the obligatory one phone call. Not knowing what to do, he calls the Training Wing he's been assigned to and the operator (bless her heart) puts him through to the Wing Commander. That's not normal and it kinda reaffirms my belief in God. Anyway...the Wing King listened to Don and, after a moment, said, "Put the officer on the line." Don hands the phone to the nearest cop who then gets to listen to a furious senior officer who, through gritted teeth, basically threatens the yahoo with an airstrike if he doesn't "let my person go." Of course, that wasn't possible, but the Colonel correctly assumed this knob wouldn't know that and fairly shortly thereafter Don is on the road again.
Second story: Don's grandfather was the first Black person in his Mississippi hometown to own a car. This was in the 1920s or early 30s, I think. One day he parking the car next to the curb in town and happens to bump into, at .0000001 mph, a white woman standing in front of his spot. Complete accident, nobody hurt. A crowd sees this, pulls him from the car, and lynches...the car. They wrap a chain around the front bumper and hoist it up a nearby tree.
So now back to question to Donnie about the vest. His answer (I paraphrase, but only a little), "If my jet has a problem and I need to punch (eject) over the Mississippi training area, those f***ers" ain't gonna take me alive. I'm going to E&E ("escape and evade") back here and all the s**t in the vest will come in handy." After the two stories, I didn't even laugh. Made perfect sense to me.
2) While on staff assignment as a Major I spent a lot (2.5 years) of time with the DEA. Long story but suffice it to say the DoJ tapped the DoD quite often in the 80s and 90s to garner any goodies and training for the drug war down South (by "South" I mean south of the US border). Met a lot of Agents and was impressed with them for their courage, ingenuity, ability to operate under insane pressure and their generally very large cojones needed to infiltrate and undermine the cartels. But one conversation got my attention where a seasoned argent, without a hint of humor, told me he only recognized two kinds of people: other cops and "perps." If you weren't one, you were, by definition, the other. You just hadn't been caught yet if you were of the non-cop persuasion. It brought home to me how cynical one can get if he spends his life up to his armpits in human depravity. And it tempered my up to that time reflexive respect and admiration for cops in general. Make no mistake, they still have my respect and admiration, but it isn't automatic or assumed and I am very careful when dealing with them...which is vanishingly rare and usually in a non-field setting (like going through security at the County Courthouse to pay property taxes, or whatever).
3) There are YouTube videos of cops going absolutely apes**t during a traffic stop when said cop is told by the person stopped that they are carrying and have a permit, I think the grossest one I saw was in Ohio and the guy stopped was white. So, while this case seems to be straight-up racism, I dunno, maybe not as open-and-shut as it may appear. Okay. I'm not naive, but there are badge wearers out there who have utterly lost their sense of perspective and/or proportion, thanks to the environment they are immersed in 8+ hours per day. Add to that mix a person with a tenuous grip on civility, maturity, equality or even humanity, and hoooo boy...color may be more an exacerbating factor than the prime one. In any case, there is no excuse for what that Trooper did. None.
Second takeaway:
Circa 1990, I was pulled over by two LAPD officers. I was asked for my registration and license, as usual in a stop. I gave them to the officer, and then I did something stupid. It turned out not to cause a problem, but it certainly could have. I had just come from a fast-food burger place and I had a bag of burgers and fries on my passenger seat, and had been eating fries on my drive home. Not thinking, I reached into this bag and pulled out a few more fries. I saw a second officer, who for some reason had gone to the passenger side, tense up and realized my error. Luckily he saw the fries, but I refrained from that point in reaching into the bag again.
It turned out that I had been pulled over because my plates were on the hot list (the car had been stolen and returned several months earlier). When they told me this, I realized just how bad an idea it was to reach into that bag of fries. If I had been black (which was NOT unusual in that neighborhood), would the story have a different ending?
They gave me a ticket for rolling a stop sign, which might have been true or might just have been a pretext for the stop, and told me to go to the DMV and change the plates.
told that my plates were on the hot list, and they really want3ed to see my registration and license.
So, a few take-aways. I live in a state now where the ONLY time I need to get any form of state approval for a handgun is if I intend to carry it on my body concealed. I can buy a gun and keep in my glovebox without any paperwork at all. No registration, no CCW. If I were to do that (which I consider unwise), I would probably tell an officer that I had a weapon in my glovebox before opening it, or even reaching for it, and ask him how he wanted to proceed -- never taking my hands off the steering wheel.
But it occurs to me this makes the interaction awkward and introduces danger to the officer and, hence, to me. I think the actual takeaway is: unless you have a real need for carrying a weapon like that, don't.
I must be honest and confess that as I read your piece prior to you revealing the actual race of the cop and motorist, that I reflexively assumed the cop's harsh interaction was racially motivated. So pervasive is that narrative(white perpetrator/black victim) in the media, that I have to a certain extent have developed(though certainly nowhere near as much as many leftists)an instinctive tendency to assume race is an issue in police interactions where the cop is white, and motorist black. So your column definitely provoked a lot of thought, as it challenged some of my instinctive assumptions regarding race that I thought I didn't really have.