You must watch until the end to get to the nub of this issueYou must watch until the end to get to the nub of this issue
As a White guy I went through this same thing a few years ago.
I was outside gardening in nothing but my gym shorts on a hot Summer Houston day. My 13 year old Golden Retriever was asleep in the shade against my garage. A police car pulled up and an officer got out to inform me that my dog had killed a cat over on Cedar Lane a few minutes ago. He was here to take my dog away.
I smiled and pointed to old JR asleep explaining that not only has he been there asleep for the past few hours, that he is deaf, has arthritis so bad he cant even get out of the yard yet alone all the way to Cedar Lane, but he also loves cats, he has two he sleeps with every night.
Please restrain your animal!
He is asleep for Chrissake.
Your animal is AT LARGE!
No he isn’t he’s AT ASLEEP. In my own yard I might add. And so very obviously not guilty.
Sir, restrain your animal, this is the last time I will tell you.
Gee…[I give the dog a shake, get behind him to lift his rear end so he can get upright, walk him into the house and return to the scene of no crime at all where two backup squads with blue lights flashing had arrived, and a small neighborhood audience
Drivers license please!
You know damn well I don’t have my drivers license. You can see I have no pockets in these shorts. Look, I am in my front yard. I am not driving, I am gardening. Neither my dog nor I have done anything wrong and you know it!
SIR YOUR DRIVERS LICENSE!
I wasn’t driving you stupid dickhead!
Three of them jumped me, smashed my face into the pavement. I was shackled, thrown in the back of a squad and carried off to jail covered in blood, sweat and dirt in my gym shorts. Like Gates I was released later with no charges.
This issue is not as much about race as it is the reason so many working class men become cops in the first place. The joy they take in jacking people around – and getting paid for it!
Respect? Respect must be EARNED not mindlessly delegated.
Lesson learned? Yes! Cops are stupid dickheads. Which had that moment been proved to be more than just a universal assumption!