Attorney Shuts Down Police Stop of Black Handyman: ‘Now Please Leave Our Neighborhood’
Police said the video showed no misconduct, but Westby said they behaved shamefully, saying the interaction would not likely have played out the same way in a poor, black neighborhood.
“It was very interesting, in the sense of getting a picture of how black cops treat black people, and how humiliating it was for him,” Westby told the Washington Post. “They were treating him just like a dog.”
More: Attorney Shuts Down Police Stop of Black Handyman: ‘Now Please Leave Our Neighborhood’
Almost any African-American man in this country can tell you that it isn’t just white cops who harass them. It’s cops period - black, white, hispanic, asian, whatever. The common denominator is the victims of the discrimination, suspicion, harassment, and violence are usually African-American men. It’s not that it never happens to anyone else. I’m sure it does, just not with the frequency that it does to black men. A black male in this country grows up in an world where he is almost always presumed to be up to no good.
Imagine living in NYC and getting stopped and frisked tens of times, seeing it happen to your friends, father, uncles, cousins. All in your own neighborhood. Just for walking down the street. It doesn’t matter how you’re dressed, or how you’re doing in school, or if you have a job, or if you’re being a good father to your kids. It doesn’t even matter what neighborhood you live in. It isn’t only the ghetto where this happens. It happens in middle and working class black neighborhoods as well.
I’m thankful that technology is bringing this to the forefront but it isn’t anything new, just nobody ever believed the victims before. Now only the willfully blind can deny what is going on.