Black Woman in Texas Brutalized By Police

I don't really know what to say about this story which recently took place in Forth Worth Texas. A white police officer insulted and arrested a black mother who was trying to make a complaint that a white man had assaulted her seven year old child. This story is a poignant example of white supremacy. This is really no different than what would have taken place in 1925. The only difference is that in 1925 no black person in Texas would have been under the slightest illusion that the police were obligated to respond to their calls for assistance and/or possibly arrest a white assailant. We've talked incessantly about retraining police or protesting or making police live in the areas they serve or hiring more black police or demilitarizing the police or having civilian review boards or so forth and so on. Those are all good ideas as far as they go but as we saw with the Michael Slager mistrial in South Carolina none of things mean a goddamn thing if the jury pool refuses to convict. And while convicting a truly guilty cop for abusing or killing a citizen is of course a good thing, it's infinitely better for the citizen not to be abused or killed by cops in the first place. As cops justifiably have no fear of sanctions for bad behavior from the justice system or their departments or their unions the only thing that will give bad police pause from committing wrongs upon citizens is if citizens start shooting them in the head. It is not normal for anyone to expect that American citizens should tolerate this sort of thing.This country was born in violent revolution from outrage over much lighter offenses.Other revolutions have started from anger over police brutality. The system has failed. 


If Black citizens can't even report crimes without being insulted, brutalized and arrested then that means that Black Americans aren't truly citizens. It also means that if you're going to be arrested anyway you might as well take the law into your own hands. So when someone does something wrong to you, don't call the police, handle it yourself. The mother trying to protect her son would have been wiser to call the men in her family to handle the assault upon her son instead of calling the police. The police are simply not worthy of trust or respect when it comes to Black people. It is inconceivable that that police officer would have been so contemptuous of or so quickly laid hands upon an upper middle class or wealthy white woman who was making a complaint. Racial hatred destroys society.
It appears from the video that the police had been called by Craig reporting that one of her neighbors had attempted to choke her son. She told the officer one of their neighbors – who is also present in the video – had assaulted their son after he dropped a piece of paper on the ground. The officer replied: “Why don’t you teach your son not to litter?” Craig and the officer then had a tense exchange, and when the daughter attempted to stand in between them, he pulled each one to the ground and arrested them. The Fort Worth police department said in a statement released on Thursday afternoon that they had reviewed the officer’s body-camera footage but would not be releasing it or many other details because state law regarding internal investigations doesn’t allow them to do so.

“We acknowledge that the initial appearance of the video may raise serious questions,” the statement read. “We ask that our investigators are given the time and opportunity to thoroughly examine this incident and to submit their findings.” Attorney Lee Merritt tweeted that he was representing the two and had visited them at the Mansfield jail where they are being held on charges that included resisting and interference, he said. He added the officer is under investigation – which the two cooperated with – and will be given 48 hours to prepare a statement and consult an attorney.

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