If a police officer wants to pull a particular motorist over, for whatever reason, he can come up with a plausible justification for it, even if the “official” one is not the actual reason for his actions. My sister told me a story a few years back about a conversation she’d had with an acquaintance who happened to be a Baltimore City police officer (a black man). He told her with a rather unsettling air of gloating pride, that they (the police) can always come up with a reason to pull someone over if they want to stop a motorist. She said this officer’s cavalier admission actually gave her chills because of what it said about his attitude concerning his own authority.
We in society endow law enforcement with a great deal of power, including that of life and death. Of course, we need them to have broad reaching authority to protect public safety and civility, and most of us are damned glad they have it when they carry out their jobs with soberness of mind and humility of heart. I think most police officers try to good public servants, but when it comes to encounters with LEO, a person’s “mileage may vary” depending upon the societal demographic one occupies, the location and circumstances of one’s encounter with police, and the judgement of law enforcement about the significance of those junctures. When lives may hang in the balance, it’s absolutely critical that LEO make good judgements. More and more, however, we are being presented with video evidence that an unacceptable number of them do not.
The attitudes expressed by the officers who assaulted the 2nd grade school teacher during their encounter with her, and the way they justified her treatment by blaming the entire demographic they believe she represents, angered me. But sadly, it did not surprise me. The transparently lame excuse later proffered on behalf of the officer who shot the behavioral therapist (who obviously did everything right during his encounter with LEO) was just another clumsy attempt at CYA when the rote “I feared for my life”/ I thought he had a gun" avenue was so obviously negated by the video evidence. The panicked variation of “I feared for his life”/ “I thought the other guy had a gun” would be laughable were it not so pathetically unimaginative. That apparently many people were instantly willing to suspend logic in order to embrace that excuse, even in the face of whom it was who was handcuffed? Not surprising, either.