For generations, Black people have complained, protested, and fought back against racial profiling by police in America, while the police and their civilian bootlickers have, in turn, denied the allegations of racial profiling and insisted Black and Latino people are disproportionately targeted by police because we are inherently violent, not because the cops and their apologists are inherently racist.
But what happens when Black people accuse cops of racial profiling, racial aggression, and police brutality, and the police respond by, well, doubling down on their racism?
Such appears to be the case for two 22-year-old Black men, Lonnie Smith and Mason Wood, who, last week, filed a lawsuit against East Lansing, Michigan, and its police chief over an incident in which they were pepper-sprayed and arrested by cops who falsely accused them of fighting. The police chief, Jennifer Brown, appeared to excuse her officers’ behavior by blaming the “disproportionate number of minorities” coming into the city for Michigan State University’s “Fall Welcome” event in mid-August.
“We have a very transient population, and over the last month, starting with Welcome Weekend, we have had a disproportionate number of minorities come into the community and commit crimes, and as police officers we are simply responding to those crimes,” Brown told WLNS-TV.
Actually, Brown’s racist excuse for her officers’ alleged racial profiling came not just in response to the case of Smith and Woods, but in response to community members calling for investigations into the East Lansing Police Department’s use of force and racial inequity after a review of recent police interaction data revealed that Black people were disproportionately targeted.
From WLNS:
Data provided – and some later recalled – by ELPD reveal
suse of force instances involving Black/African American persons in the city were dramatically more prevalent than those involving other racial demographics.For instance, the data for July show that 88% of people subjected to some form of use of force were identified as Black/African American. In June, that number was 55.5%.
Official U.S. Census data show that 12% of East Lansing residents identified as Black/African American.
But the data and various reports offer conflicting information and various descriptions, some based on the semantics used by police and others confused by the various counts.
Harold Pope, Jr., president of the NAACP Lansing Branch, says he is preparing to request that the Michigan State Police, Department of Attorney General and the Michigan Department of Civil Rights formally investigate the disproportionate impact of “use of force” or “response to resistance” – official terms used variously in police data – on communities of color.
As for Smith and Woods, the incident that led to their arrest took place on Aug. 24 at about 1:30 a.m. in downtown East Lansing near the university.
According to a pair of lawsuits filed by the two men, Smith was actually trying to break up a squabble between Woods and another man outside the restaurant Dave’s Hot Chicken when they were both pepper-sprayed by a cop who also pepper-sprayed other citizens who had nothing to do with the fight. The officer in question, Andrew Lyon, who is also named as a defendant in the lawsuits, was reportedly captured on surveillance video pepper-spraying Woods and Smith at close range after the altercation had already been defused. Video footage released in October reportedly shows the two men in a group of Black, white, male, and female individuals laughing with each other as they wait to enter Dave’s Hot Chicken. Woods is then seen exchanging words with another Black man, leading to light pushing and shoving, when another Black man, presumably Smith, who is a student at MSU, is seen intervening.
No punches were thrown, and no one was injured — until the cops showed up.
“I got maced for no reason,” Smith said while handcuffed. “I was breaking the fight up.”
“He was breaking it up,” another witness said.
“It was clear to everyone involved that the situation was de-escalating and that Smith’s role in it was that of a peacemaker, not an instigator,” the lawsuits — filed by an attorney for Wood and Smith, Jack W. Rucker of the Nova Law firm — state
“Smith has no criminal history and is not a troublemaker by any stretch of the definition,” Rucker said. “It is frankly appalling that the East Lansing Police Department feels so cavalier about dragging his name through the mud.”
A month after the incident, the East Lansing Police Department issued a press release claiming they were the ones who defused the situation, accusing Smith and Woods of fighting each other.
Besides the way this case illustrates the fact that police be lying, this is what racial bias in policing looks like: Black men were involved in a minor skirmish, so all Black men involved must be responsible, including the one who helped de-escalate the situation, and the police chief justifies it all by claiming there were “too many minorities” on the scene in the first place.
The implicit and explicit racial bias of police officers across the country doesn’t just lead to racial profiling and police brutality; it impacts how they do their jobs in general.
Last month, a white man, 22-year-old Tyler Matthew Johns, shot and killed an 11-year-old boy during a road rage incident in Nevada involving the boy’s father, a Latino man. While Johns was arrested and charged with open murder — “which is defined as first-degree murder and other included offenses,” according to ABC News — police bodycam footage shows responding officers showed far more concern for the white shooter than the Latino man, who was crying over his dead son.
Racial bias among police officers is real, and one can only imagine how many of these instances are not caught on video.
The problem isn’t the mere existence of “too many minorities.” The problem is racist cops. That’s it, and that’s all.
SEE ALSO:
Not Fired: White Judge Reassigned Over Racist Meme
Aurora Police Officer Fatally Shoots Black Man Who Allegedly Tossed His Gun During Traffic Stop
