The other day I stopped in one of those glorified delis to treat myself to a sandwich for lunch. I had to wait for a while and as I sat there, I watched as three beautiful blonde, blue-eyed girls ran amok in the place. The oldest looked to be no more than 10 and the youngest about five or six. Their mom was in the line before me and she was busy on her phone paying absolutely no attention to them. They each grabbed handfuls of wrapped stuff and little bags of chips, took them to their table, tore open some, pushed some in their pockets, fought among themselves, sat on the table, squealed and had a grand time. They were children being children without supervision. I looked at them and wondered if there’d ever come a time when they’d come to realize just how privileged they are. Not one soul said a single word to them. I watched and listened carefully when it came time for the mom to pay for her purchases. She looked across at the table and then told the cashier/manager what else she was paying for. He took her word for it and charged as she had directed him.
I thought of that incident as I read the account of the 11-year-old black girl who was tased by an off-duty cop for stealing food. It broke my heart as I watched her sobbing as they took the prongs from her back.
Cincinnati police officer stunned an 11-year-old girl with a Taser on Monday, the city’s police department said, setting off anger and driving officials to re-examine the department’s use-of-force policy.
The girl, who is African-American, was suspected of shoplifting food, Councilman Jeff Pastor said on Wednesday. The officer, who is also black, was off duty and working a security detail for the Kroger grocery store where the incident happened, Mr. Pastor said.
Listen to the sadist as he tries to cover his sorry ass:
You don’t have any receipt for any of this, so guess what? You get to claim all of this. Sweetheart, the last thing I wanna do is taze you like that. When I say stop you stop. You know you caught, just stop. That hurt my heart to do that to you like that. And then I got to listen to all of those idiots out there telling me I how I was wrong for tasing you. You broke the law, and then you fled as I tried to apprehend you. // You know what, sweetheart, this is why there ain’t no grocery stores in the black community because of all this going on.
So here’s this black cop blaming his 11-year-old victim for his brutal actions against her. He not only blames her for her stealing and for his brutality but in so many words he was also telling her that she stole because she’s black. There are no grocery stores in the black community because black people are thieves. Talk about internalized hatred. This poor man, even as he traumatizes and victimizes this young child, is also sadly a victim himself. His muddled attempt at sociology notwithstanding, his words show that he’s gulped down and poisoned himself with gallons of racist Kool-Aid. Where cruelty intersects idiocy there you’ll find Officer Kevin Brown. One thing we know for damned sure, Officer Brown would not have dared to tase a white child. He knew — or thought he knew — that he could get away with brutalizing a black child because nobody would care. This idiot needs to be fired.
Doneisha told what happened to her:
“It hit my back real fast and then I stopped, then I fell and I was shaking and I couldn’t really breathe,” she said of the Taser. “It’s just like you’re passing out, but you’re shaking.”
Journalists were all too eager to describe this child as a suspect and to — almost gleefully — inform us that the cop was black. “Ok, see? It’s your own kind who’s being forced to take violent action against you.” FTR, we are no more comforted when interacting with black cops than we are with their white comrades. Historically, and for a number of reasons, black officers are generally more concerned with the blue uniform and fitting in than they are with doing right by the black community.
[T]he legal backdrop against which police officers act is the same for black and white officers. In particular, like white officers, black officers can draw on Fourth Amendment law as a source of empowerment to target other African Americans.23×23. See infra section II.E, pp. 2015–23. Second, conscious or unconscious racial biases might lead black police officers to aggressively police other African Americans. Think of these biases as “same-race biases” or “intraracial biases,” because both the victims and the perpetrators of these biases have the same racial identity
Our children deserve better. Doneisha deserves better. She’s a child. If you can’t manage an interaction with an 11-year old child without brutalizing her, then you don’t need to be in the force. And when these horrific incidents come to light, we need to hear the majority community loud and clear. There needs to be universal condemnation of this officer and the practice of dehumanizing black and brown children. Let our children be children, too. Please.