How White People Survive Their Encounters With Police

Florida woman threatens to sic KKK on black cop, is still alive.

(Image via iStock)

We know that the rules for white people interacting with the police are different than black people interacting with the police.

Those rules are unfair, but the solution isn’t to drag white people down to the level of injustice visited upon black and brown citizens. The solution is to bring black and brown citizens up to the level enjoyed by any drunk-ass white woman who gets pulled over by the police. The goal should be to stop the police from shooting any unarmed person, and punish them gravely when they do.

With that in mind, I present this story as an example of the restraint that should be the standard practice of ALL cops, not just black cops dealing with an allegedly abusive and racist white woman. From the Miami Herald:

53-year-old Julie Edwards faces charges of resisting an officer without violence, driving under the influence, making a threat against a law enforcement officer and refusing to submit for testing, according to Volusia County Jail Corrections…

Police say she went into a racist tirade as [deputy Brandon King], who is black, filled out paperwork for her arrest.

She warned King that the Ku Klux Klan will burn crosses in front of his house and that “she hopes to find Deputy King in a corner alone,” police say. Edwards is also accused of telling the black deputy that “n—– should have never been let out of slavery.”

Now, I’m not the kind of guy who takes a police report as a statement of “fact.” But, to the extent this report is true, I feel pretty confident that a black woman who launched into a racist tirade about “cracker-ass crackers” after being pulled over would not be out on bond, as Edwards currently is, if the black woman survived her encounter with the police at all.

What we should take from this episode is that cops can be threatened, explicitly, without firing a hail of bullets into an unarmed civilian. They can be abused, verbally, without punching or kicking or choking the life out of the suspect. They can perform their difficult duties WITHOUT brutalizing those who dare cross them.

Sponsored

Julie Edwards is alive BECAUSE Brandon King appears to be a “good” police officer. Officers who cannot get to Brandon King’s level have no business on the force and often belong in jail.

We all know that this would have gone down differently if Edwards were black. The problem is that the cops know that too. They know that they don’t have to show restraint when the suspect is black, because they know that most of the time no one will ever punish them for “losing their cool” with people of color.

Florida woman warns KKK will burn crosses for black deputy who arrested her, cops say [Miami Herald]


Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

Sponsored