Thought provoking read.

https://franklywrite.com/2020/...racism-and-a-poodle/

I've only started reading the comments. Read them.

Saw that earlier today...not sure it possible but interesting

I used to drive a old dodge van. Once I was parked on the street in NYC, a block away from my apartment, and was sitting in the driver's seat. I no longer remember why I was sitting in my parked van, with my mastiff on the back bench seat, but a cop on foot patrol apparently had a problem with it. He started interrogating me through my closed window, which I refused to roll down. Sam, sensing my discomfort, started barking. When the cop saw the dog, with the head of a giant pumpkin, a bark like the roar of an elephant, and a huge, slavering, open maw,I thought the cop was going to piss his pants. He actually drew his gun, against a dog contained in a van with closed windows, and demanded I open the door or he was going to shoot my dog. Yes, he said that.

"The dog is just doing his job. This is his van. He can't hurt you while he is inside the van. You are going to shoot my dog when he can't do a thing to you? Why?"

The cop looked confused. I took my opening, started the engine, and drove off.

I have to say I have never had a single good interaction with any on-duty cop. Every last one has been a stupid asshole. I would never let a cop have any kind of access to my dog. I don't care how much they say they love dogs. There lies the path to a dead dog.

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There lies the path to a dead dog.

Or worse, a dead you ...

This has probably been posted on WTF before. Court OKs Barring High IQs for cops.

In the past, I have said that, when I lived in Massachusetts, I can think of at least four traffic stops, and a couple of other police encounters, where I have not a single bad thing to say about the officers involved. They treated me politely and respectfully and appropriately, they were lenient when they didn't have to be, they were stern when it was appropriate to be stern. I have zero complaints.

And now, looking back, I have to wonder exactly how many of those encounters were as mild as they were because I'm a white man who looks like a suburban, educated white man. That puts a far less benign interpretation on things.

Several people in the comments asked how the story might have been different if it had not been a poodle, but a human.

Ask Diamond Reynolds. Or her four-year-old daughter.

Yes. Well.

A couple of years ago, I posted here about something that happened to Little Sphinx, who was a college freshman with a huge afro at the time. He had driven our old, crummy-looking 2003 Honda Civic to the wealthy, white enclave of McLean, Virginia, for a pool party with friends.

On his way home that night, he pulled over into a school parking lot to check directions on his phone. A police officer came up behind his parked car and turned on her lights. She said she needed to check out things that look "suspicious." She ran his license and, finding no warrants or other reason to take him to jail, released him.

When I mentioned how upset I was about that here at WTF, my concerns were dismissed and I heard all kinds of reasons why what had happened was perfectly fine. Folks thought that stopping his car in an empty school parking lot and gazing down at a phone is "suspicious" enough to warrant police action in the form of an unlawful stop and a detention (unlawful because this officer did not have reasonable suspicion that Little Sphinx was involved in criminal activity).

I said and still say that the only thing suspicious about Little Sphinx that night was that he was a young black man driving an old car in a white neighborhood. There's a term for it in the criminal justice world: "Race out of place." I'm glad he didn't wind up being the next Philando Castile.

We still have the Honda, and part of me wants to get rid of it and buy something nice for Little Sphinx so that this doesn't happen to him again. But then I get mad. Why should I have to spend $15,000 because of racial profiling and racism?

I may do it anyway, but for now, I encourage him to take my shiny 2015 Mini. It's smaller, but maybe it's safer.

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I said and still say that the only thing suspicious about Little Sphinx that night was that he was a young black man driving an old car in a white neighborhood.

Yep.

I hope and pray (and vote and speak out and donate!) so that that this time, with these protests, something will change.

I think (hope) we've all learned a bit and wouldn't dismiss your concerns again, Cindy.

Cindy, when I was in my 20s every vehicle I owned was a junker. I got stopped by police all.the. time. I guess between having curly hair and driving a run down car, I looked like I did drugs. When I was in high school anyone with long hair got stopped. I have no doubt your son was stopped for driving while black. But the vehicle you drive does also make a difference.

I remember the story. My vote was for police bias.

Nothing like that has happened to me, not in Florida, New York, Arizona, or Hawaii.

Interestingly enough, in Hawaii, native Hawaiians and mixed-race people often get treated harshly by the police and the justice system.

I'll offer an unsolicited opinion about the car. Other the the reason you mention, a $15,000 car (like a Hyundai Accent or Kia equivalent) would have modern safety features, would be less likely to break down, and would last a long time.

My first car was a '64 VW Beetle. I drove it for ten years. Nobody paid any attention to it.

Thanks for that, Nina. I really appreciate it.

You know, there is a lot of talk right now about what should be done. Right now, a lot of policing occurs because police pull someone over for a traffic violation. Then they can do things like ask for consent to search the car, shine their lights into the car, bring a drug-sniffing dog, arrest the driver or passengers for warrants, or tow the car for unpaid registration. If police are more likely to focus on black people (or people who drive old cars) than white people or affluent people, that's not fair.

Some people in police reform circles think that it is not possible to get police to stop racial profiling. So the answer would be to take away officers' discretion to stop anyone (regardless of color) for certain infractions.

Take failure to use your turn signal. That is the only reason a state trooper pulled over Sandra Bland in 2015. Now, how many of you have been pulled over for failure to use your turn signal? That is a ticky-tack nonsense reason to pull someone over. Well, if black people are going to be the victims of these ticky-tack stops more than white people, then the argument is you should take away officer discretion to make those types of stop, which are for the purpose of harassment or just fishing.

The proponents of this idea say these traffic stops (like failure to signal, failure to maintain lane, broken tail light) do not make anyone safer, but they make black drivers less safe. And why is the state paying to employ anyone to enforce ticky-tack laws?

You know, I was in a car that was pulled over for a ticky-tack nonsense, made-up traffic violation. When I lived in Arizona as a young adult, I had a black boyfriend named David, who had a Monte Carlo. We would sometimes drive to LA for a vacation, and at that time the freeway between LA and Phoenix was not complete and you had to go through some small Arizona towns for a stretch.

One night, David and I drove through McDonalds in Buckeye, AZ, got our food, and kept going. As soon as we pulled out of the McDonalds, we got pulled over. The officer said he had been following us and David had crossed the center line several times. This was a complete and total lie. We had just pulled onto the road, and I was sitting right there in the front seat and would know if my boyfriend was driving on the wrong side of the road. The streets were quiet, so there is no way the officer got us confused with another car. He asked us where we were going, and he asked David what was in the McDonald's cup. He then wrote David a ticket, which he paid because Buckeye is a hike and why would we ever want to go back there?

That sort of harassment and profiling has got to stop.

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hat sort of harassment and profiling has got to stop.

Absolutely.

At the same time, if you aren't going to enforce a turn signal law, why have it at all?

Perhaps the answer is to do an annual statistical analysis of each officer's stops, to see if there's a racial disparity.

As an aside, dash cams are part of the answer. you think I crossed the center line several times? My dash cam says otherwise.

But that answer reeks of economic privilege, because not everyone can afford that sort of solution. And why should some people HAVE to have a dash cam? I do not, because I don't feel I need one.

Maybe if cops needed police dash cam evidence to support their observations on these foot faults.

Anyway, I'm just noodling. It's a problem. But refusing to enforce a law is not, in my view, the answer. If it's not worth enforcing, it shouldn't be a law.

See, where I disagree is that we should not spend our limited resources enforcing ticky tack laws.

Does anyone really believe that the roads will be safer if everyone who fails to use a turn signal is given a ticket?

And if we know that these laws are used disproportionately against some people based on skin color, how can we just ignore that?

As for the idea of officers having dash cams to document the violation . . . that rather misses the point. What we would want to stop is racial profiling and "fishing," right? We want to prohibit the stop completely, if it is based on profiling. Once the stop occurs, the harm has occurred because that driver was stopped for the color of his skin. So even if an officer has a dashcam, the officer can still pull over a black guy on a trumped up turn signal violation, harass and snoop around, and then let the driver go if nothing is found. So long as there is no ticket issued, no one will ever know.