Day in day out, people of color are exposed to these outrageous actions from Jackasses in uniform and for no other reason other than the people they are abusing are Black.
Speaking as a former police officer who faced real danger, not a contrived danger, intended to evoke sympathy if you are told there was a robbery. You receive the information from the dispatcher that the car is a certain make, model, color, with a certain color person in it. Aren’t you at least clued in that there will be dozens of cars that make, model, and color around? So you must read carefully not to overreact?
Worse yet, if you are told that the person in the car is a tall slim man, why would you stop at gunpoint a car with a woman and her children and handcuff them?
I’ll tell you why. They do not feel a duty of care, and they would not stop the same car with a white woman and her children, yank them out, cuff them and subject them to the terror of their wannabe-Rambo warrior-style policing.
How do these mental-midgets put handcuffs on the girl and her mother when the dispatch told them the person they were looking for was a tall slim male.
But that is what they did to Deondra Hawkins, her autistic son, and her 14-year-old daughter at an Atlanta gas station.
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“It was pure confusion. The police pulled up with their guns out and demanded we get out of the car, and I had no idea what I could have possibly have done,” Hawkins said.
This not policing; it is a manifestation of amped-up morons with too much power and support acting out their Rambo fantasies on vulnerable people.
Hawkins and her children were horrified as police yelled conflicting commands at her and her shocked children. It is important to remember that her son is an autistic male who could have become flustered and made a sudden move that would unleashed a barrage of cop-bullets, killing all three.
Or maybe the conflicting commands are designed for exactly that outcome, knowing they will not be held accountable?
Hawkins says nearly a week after the horrifying experience, the police have not reached out to her to apologize, and she and her children are dealing with the psychological effects of their police encounter. She wants the police to receive better training to prevent incidents like this from happening to other innocent people.
“Better training so they don’t handle people so roughly and better training where they don’t suspect everyone of being a suspect,” she said.
No dear, training is not the problem, they are doing exactly what they are told to do. Abusing you is exactly the point.
Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.