Michael Harriot recounts an episode of ‘assertive law enforcement’ for The Root:
Twenty-one-year-old Milton Travis was headed home in his silver Chevrolet Malibu Friday night when police allege that he ignored a stop sign. As you will soon see, cops in Joliet apparently take their street signs very seriously…
After the officers endured the painstaking agony of blowing their horn two times and approached the car, Travis refused to roll down his window. Even though the video recorded by one of his passengers, Deandra Robinson, 19, appears to show that the responding officer could be heard clearly through the glass, Joliet officers were still reeling from Travis’ blatant disregard for the emotions of stop signs.
“What was your probable cause of pulling me over?” Travis says in the video as the cop informs the Black & Mild-smoking driver that he would be under arrest if he doesn’t roll down the window.
(Let’s note, in passing, that this young man has every right to question the officer about the basis for this detention and inquiry by the police. Back to our story.)
After a back-and-forth argument in which Travis refused to roll down the window and lit his Black & Mild without freaking it, the police found a solution often taught in police academies, Kool-Aid commercials and Jazmine Sullivan songs: They bust his windows out his car.
For ignoring a stop sign.
An onlooker who happened to be filming the incident captured another angle of the encounter which shows police breaking the windows, snatching Travis out of the car and appearing to violently beat him with a nightstick as bystanders and the other passengers helplessly look on.
As I’ve said in a number of diaries about police harassment of and violence against African-Americans, thank goodness for smartphones with video and social media.
Otherwise, we would not hear of this instance of criminal behavior by police, the young African-American males would be left defenseless in a criminal justice system that presumes their guilt of something, and which would treat the post-incident concocted account of the officers like it arrived from Mt Sinai on stone tablets, even though police statements might be, on average, less truthful than any other type of witness :
Judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys report that police perjury is commonplace,'and even police officers themselves concede that lying is a regular feature of the life of a cop. (pg. 457)
Police officers can be expected to omit, redact, and even lie on their police reports, sworn or unsworn, they will conceal or misrepresent to cover up corruption and brutality; they are trained to deceive citizens during investigations as part of good police practice; they will obscure facts, and even lie, to cover up the misconduct of fellow officers Additionally, command practice and policy gives officers every incentive to lie to cover for lack of productivity or to aggrandize themselves for recognition and promotion. And yes, police officers will commit perjury in our courts of law."However, lies under oath, while often involving the tailoring of testimony to meet constitutional requirements, run a much wider gamut.For instance, perjury will occur to avoid criminal conviction or civil liability when the police officer is the accused. Police will commit perjury to further the prosecution of a citizen by adding inculpatory"evidence" to better secure a conviction," to gild the lily of police conduct, or merely to sanitize the record of uncomfortable facts. Put most broadly, as long as a police officer's use of power and fulfillment of responsibilities is reviewed (whether by courts, government agencies or supervisors), and as long as such reviews are deemed by the officer as creating legal impediments to more immediate goals, he will have an incentive to lie. (pp. 460-461, citations omitted)
The violence against Persons of Color, under the color of law, has continued unabated since White Europeans arrived in the US for the purpose of land theft and genocide. What’s different now is that it is being documented by private citizens, who are doing the work of justice, which historically the justice system refused to.
If you see something, say something. And video it and post the video to social media. Lives depend on it.