systemic racism
Aug. 3rd, 2009 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Latino Grandfather, Pregnant Woman Tasered at Baptism — But Don’t Call the Cops Racist [VIDEO]
A Latino family in Manassas, Virginia, is celebrating the baptism of their two young boys, at a party held in their grandfather’s backyard. The police arrive in response to a noise complaint, and ask to see the grandfather’s ID. The family’s account says that he provided it, but the police report say that he refused; both accounts agree that the grandfather was then Tasered three times in rapid succession, on his own property, and then charged with ‘public intoxication.’ The pregnant mother of the two boys ran to help him as he lay on the ground — and was also Tasered, then charged with assaulting a police officer.
I’ll say it again — all parties agree that county police officers arrived at a children’s baptism party being held at a private residence, then Tasered a 55-year-old Bible study teacher three times and Tasered a pregnant woman once, in front of a yard full of kids, including her kids, and family members. Then they read rights. To the grandfather and the pregnant woman. For ‘public intoxication’ and ‘assaulting a police officer,’ respectively. As they lay temporarily paralyzed on the ground.
Can you imagine being one of those two boys, and watching as your own mother, pregnant with your sibling-to-be, is electrocuted by police officers and arrested, for rushing to the side of your grandfather as lay paralyzed on the ground? How would that make you feel about your relationship to the police, as a young Latino man about to grow up in the astonishingly xenophobic state of Virginia?MORE
PS
Date: 2009-08-05 06:15 am (UTC)Everytime I hear stuff like this, I think about that car. Except it's got actual human beings inside it.