Egregious Incidences Of Police Violence Continue Amidst Public Outcry For Change.…

The tone-deaf­ness of police offi­cers across the United States in the use of force had one of its lat­est iter­a­tions in Rock Hill North Carolina, on June 23^rd, 2021.
Officers of Rock Hill police pulled over a motorist who was obvi­ous­ly known to them to be a drug deal­er. The dri­ver Ricky Price was removed from the con­vert­ible after offi­cers told him he had made an ille­gal lane change.… a ruse they use to jus­ti­fy ille­gal stops and some­thing the pros­e­cu­tors and judges embrace.
In a well-cir­cu­lat­ed video on social media, the cops brought in a canine to sniff Price’s car, and true to form; there was a hit.
Another ruse police use to ille­gal­ly search peo­ple’s vehi­cles while claim­ing that their dog gave them a hit signal.

Data col­lect­ed by inter­est­ed par­ties show that the vast major­i­ty of those hits end up with noth­ing ille­gal found. Still, it does not mat­ter because the point is to humil­i­ate and vio­late rights rather than enforce the laws.
Ricky Price was threat­ened with arrest by the undu­ly and over­ly aggres­sive offi­cers after he told them that he gave no con­sent to search his vehicle.
He com­plied, exit­ed the car and the cops com­menced to search his car. The cops claimed they found a gun and a small quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na in a cylin­dri­cal container.
No one should shed any tears for a drug deal­er who dri­ves around with a weapon; how­ev­er, the police must do their jobs bet­ter and with­out the undue brava­do that con­tin­ues to bring shame and ridicule to police each day.
From the off­set, the cops were deter­mined to hem Price up on what­ev­er charge they could, begin­ning with the con­coct­ed excuse to ini­ti­ate the stop in the first place.
After alleged­ly find­ing the small quan­ti­ty of weed, one cop told Price that the minute quan­ti­ty did not mat­ter; it was dif­fer­ent for him, in response to Ricky Price’s ques­tion of whether the penal­ty for the lit­tle weed was­n’t just a fine?

Ricky Price asked if he could call his fam­i­ly mem­bers to come to col­lect his belong­ings, a clear sign that he had no inten­tion of fight­ing the cops; he knew he was going to jail. Throughout the whole inci­dent, the elder Price know­ing he was caught was calm and respectful.
They allowed him to make the call, anoth­er indi­ca­tion that he had sur­ren­dered to being arrest­ed peace­ably as borne out by the video record­ings. His younger broth­er Travis Price arrived and start­ed to ask the offi­cers what was going on when all hell broke loose.
It was then that Rambo cop Jonathan Moreno attacked the younger Price, knocked him to the ground, and begged him to fight. Moreno grabbed Travis Price around the throat even though he was not com­mit­ting a crime and was not under arrest and there­fore could not be resist­ing arrest.
Oh, in case you are unaware of the laws, cops across the coun­try are allowed to claim that cit­i­zens resist arrest, and just so you know, that is anoth­er felony charge.
When you hear Black peo­ple talk about reimag­in­ing polic­ing, these are the moun­tains they are forced to climb each day.
Seeing what was hap­pen­ing to his younger broth­er Ricky Price yelled at the cops that Travis was his broth­er who was there to col­lect his belong­ings; they ignored him and con­tin­ued to attack and choke Travis upon which the elder Price respond­ed in defense of his broth­er as I hope any nor­mal per­son would and should.
He was thrown to the ground, hand­cuffed, and beat­en, result­ing in his blood splat­tered all over the black­top where they had him handcuffed.
The inci­dent was record­ed by an onlook­er who live-streamed the entire inci­dent on Facebook. Because the entire inci­dent was out into the open, the Rock Hill police had no rea­son to claim that they would not release their record­ing because there was an active inves­ti­ga­tion in progress. The out­ra­geous inci­dent sparked sev­er­al nights of protest in the area.

Jonathan Moreno was ter­mi­nat­ed Wednesday, July 7^th, and charged with assault, said Chief Chris Watts of the Rock Hill Police Department. Watts announced at a Thursday after­noon news conference.
According to the Herald online, Moreno stat­ed at the news con­fer­ence. He said he was sor­ry for what he did and apol­o­gized to Travis Price, who attend­ed the news con­fer­ence. “I am here to own it and make it right,” Moreno said.
Moreno said at the news con­fer­ence he made mis­takes and direct­ed his words at Travis Price, who attend­ed the con­fer­ence with his lawyer.
“I know now you were allowed to be in the area,” Moreno said to Travis Price. “I apol­o­gize for the mis­un­der­stand­ing. My mis­takes and meet­ing you in such a neg­a­tive way, I wish my emo­tions did not get the best of me. My choice of words does not define my char­ac­ter. I sin­cere­ly apol­o­gize for what you have experienced.”
In the police video released Thursday, Moreno can be heard chal­leng­ing Travis Price to “fight” while on the ground with Travis price dur­ing the arrest. Moreno also says to Travis Price, “It’s just you and me,” and “quit cry­ing.”

Police said Travis Price pushed Moreno and lat­er charged him with hin­der­ing police, but the videos show no push from Travis Price. On the video record­ing, Travis Price can clear­ly be heard telling Moreno that he did not touch him and it was Moreno who attacked him.
These tac­tics are used dai­ly by over­ly aggres­sive police offi­cers, who then arrest peo­ple they do not like on trumped-up assault and resid­ing charges.
Local pros­e­cu­tor Kevin Brackett claimed the charges against Ricky Price, Travis Price’s broth­er, remain pend­ing. Brackett said Thursday at the news con­fer­ence that Ricky Price clear­ly punched a police offi­cer in the face. Ricky Price start­ed the con­flict that turned into a vio­lent struggle.
A clear lie by Brackett, Moreno esca­lat­ed the inci­dent result­ing in the entire inci­dent get­ting out of con­trol. I won­der what this pros­e­cu­tor would have done if he wit­nessed the police attack and choke his broth­er, who had com­mit­ted no crime?
Of utmost impor­tance is the (poi­son fruit weapon) the police claimed to have recov­ered from Ricky Price’s vehi­cle; if the rea­son for the stop was illegal/​contrived, how can the evi­dence derived from it hold up in a just court of law?
Stay tuned, Ricky Price, though an un-sym­pa­thet­ic fig­ure is no less deserv­ing of jus­tice under the law than any oth­er citizen.
Ricky price has one neg­a­tive against him out­side of his crim­i­nal record, his black skin.

As these crim­i­nals are exposed by inde­pen­dent video record­ings done by patri­ot­ic cit­i­zens, look for their cohorts in state leg­is­la­tures to begin to clamp doing on the rights of cit­i­zens to video­tape their crimes.

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.Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.