From Starbucks to Hashtags: Why White Americans Call the Police on Black People

[hand2handking]

From Starbucks to Hashtags: We Need to Talk About Why White Americans Call the Police on Black People

Police monitor activity as protestors demonstrate outside a Center City Starbucks on April 15, 2018, in Philadelphia. Police arrested two black men who were waiting inside the Starbucks, which prompted an apology from the company’s CEO.
Photo: Mark Makela (Getty Images)

https://www.theroot.com/from-starbucks-to-hashtags-we-need-to-talk-about-why-w-1825284087

“Don’t you ****ing walk away! Don’t ****ing walk away from me!” the 20-something-year-old woman screamed as she followed after the 20-something-year-old guy who just got out of her car. It was 2 a.m.; only the streetlights were on, but the guy was clearly done with his girlfriend (probably ex-girlfriend at this point) and was just trying to get inside the building.

“You ****ing *******!” she screamed and ran after him, jumping onto his back for the angriest piggyback ride in history. He tussled with her for a bit, managing to slide her off his back with a thud. Then he kept walking to the apartment, cursing at her to leave him alone. This was several years ago—my friend Josh and I were awkwardly watching the whole thing. All we wanted to do was move a few final boxes into my first apartment in Laurel, Md., but this Real Housewives of Potomac cutscene was blocking our path to my second-floor unit.

“I’m gonna call the cops! I’ll tell them you hit me!” the woman screamed, sitting on the grass and pointing at her ex. “I’ll tell them you beat me up. They’ll get your ***.”

The man stopped dead in his tracks, turned around and gave her a look of shock, anger and then unmitigated fear. He was black. She was white. He knew exactly what she was saying and so did I, and most horrendously, so did she. When white people threaten to call the police on black people—out of anger, out of spite, out of pure vindictiveness—they are effectively saying, “I’ll kill you!” They’re just using a legal extension of white supremacy to do it. It’s high time we start considering these bigots just as much a threat as the police they summon to do their bidding.

This week, black America added “sitting at Starbucks waiting for a white friend” to the list of things that we cannot safely do without fear of police violence. Previous entries included sitting in your car, sitting in someone else’s car, standing on your front porch, standing on your back porch, surviving a car accident, asking for directions to school and, of course, breathing.

As a black man in America who has been harassed by police more times than I can count, I wasn’t surprised by the viral Starbucks video at all. However, my anger is directed not just at the cops but also at the cowardly Starbucks manager who made the call to the police to begin with. The men and women making these outrageous and unwarranted calls to police, which result in the harassment, unfair prosecution and even death of people of color, need to be found, publicly shamed and prosecuted to the full extent that the law allows.

No, I’m not talking about Dave Reiling, the man who reported an actual crime in Sacramento, Calif., that the police used as an excuse to shoot Stephon Clark in his own backyard. Calling the police to report an actual crime that the police overact to is not the citizen’s fault, no matter what color he or she is. I’m talking about the hundreds of cases—that we know about—every year, where white Americans actively and knowingly use the police as an extension of their personal bigotry yet face no consequences.

I’m talking about the white woman at the Red Roof Inn outside of Pittsburgh who called the cops on me because I disputed the charges on my bill and asked to speak to a manager. I’m talking about the white woman who called the cops on me last year even though she knew I was walking with political canvassers for Jon Ossoff’s congressional campaign in North Atlanta. I’m talking about the police officer who followed me behind my house in Hiram, Ohio, asking where I lived because he’d “gotten some calls about robberies.”

In each and every single one of these instances, a white person used the cops as his or her personal racism valets, and I was the one getting served. In each of these instances, I could have been arrested, beaten up or worse based on nothing more than the word of a white person whom I made uncomfortable. As sick as this all is, I still consider myself lucky.

Tamir Rice was killed at the tender age of 12 because a man who admitted tospending the afternoon drinking called 911 to report a “juvenile” who was probably carrying a “fake” gun. Constance Hollinger, the 911 dispatcher, who failed to deliver that information to the cops, got an eight-day suspension but kept her job, and there was no investigation into the caller. Tamir is still dead.

Then there’s Ronald T. Ritchie, who told 911 that John Crawford III was running around Walmart “menacing children” with a shotgun. Crawford, holding a BB gun—sold at Walmart—in the open carry state of Ohio, was shot and killed by police. Despite clear evidence that Ritchie lied to the 911 dispatcher, which is a crime, no charges were filed against him.

You can get arrested for pulling a fire alarm, making fake bomb threats and making false claims of an alien invasion—why not a false police report that results in death? We should be pushing for prosecution against these callers just as much as the cops who pull the trigger.

That’s why I knew Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson’s statement on the Philadelphia incident was trash: “Our store manager never intended for these men to be arrested and this should never have escalated the way it did ... ”

Either Johnson is lying or hasn’t been white in America as long as I’ve been black in America. Calling the police is the epitome of escalation, and calling the police on black people for noncrimes is a step away from asking for a tax-funded beatdown, if not an execution. That Starbucks manager didn’t call the police in hopes that they’d politely ask two black customers to buy a latte or leave, just as the angry woman in front of my apartment wasn’t threatening to call the cops just to get her boyfriend to listen to her. The intent of these actions is to remind black people that the ultimate consequence of discomforting white people—let alone angering them—could be death.

As horrible as the realities of American policing can be for black America, we can’t ever forget that there are even worse people out there. They’re peering out from the curtains of their house, information kiosks and “liberal” coffee counters, surreptitiously dialing their phones, whispering the exaggerations and Trumped-up fears that make America’s violent policing possible.

thoughts?

 

[Nouss]

Yup, good look on taking that suggestion to make this thread.
Good read.

 

[blastercombo]

Calling the police is the quick, sometimes candid, and LEGAL way to let out your hate and potentially have someone killed.

 

[6 Rings G.O.A.T.]

 

[AEA18]

They know what they're doing!

They see how Black people are treated by the police.

Either you're getting locked up, beat up, or killed.

 

[ninjahood]

minorities tend not to involve da fuzz...

even Italians aint wit it...

some people subscribe to Superman's script...others are more Batman in their approach.

 

[MalcolmNewton]

Black people are viewed as stray dogs or cats. When you see a stray dog you turn your nose up at it, you want to shoo it away, you don't want it coming on your property and taking a dump on your lawn, you don't want it interacting with your dog you may have in your yard. If it doesn't hurry up and go on about its business you yell and scream at it and eventually call animal control to put it down.

(Racist) whites view us as animals out of our cages, wandering around in places we don't belong and aren't wanted.

 

[Top Boy]

(Racist) whites view us as animals out of our cages, wandering around in places we don't belong and aren't wanted.

....and moderate whites suggest we roll over and continue turning the cheek. It's turtles all the way down.

Hard not to generally feel some type of way with a broad stroking brush.

 

[hand2handking]

Calling the Police on Black People Isn’t a Starbucks Problem. It’s an America Problem.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...7a8c409298b_story.html?utm_term=.770505b3162b

It’s good that Starbucks, with its announcement this week that it will close thousands of stores for a day of “racial bias training” in May, is taking steps in the right direction after a video of two black men getting arrested in one of its coffee shops went viral. But white America’s habit of needlessly calling the police on black people is not just a Starbucks culture problem. It’s an American culture problem.

The tragic examples are all over the Internet. In McKinney, Tex., in 2015, after a neighbor called police about a pool party, a responding officer used brute force on 15-year-old Dajerria Becton, slamming the girl to the ground by her hair and jamming his knees into her back and neck. The video of the sobbing, 100-pound, swimsuit-clad girl went viral. The officer was fired.

That same year, South Carolina officer Ben Fields was fired over a viral video of him flipping a black high school girl over her desk and dragging her across the classroom. Her offense? Refusing to put away her cellphone.

And, of course, who can forget what happened in 2009 when a woman in Cambridge, Mass., called 911 to report a possible burglary in her neighborhood? The man she called the cops on was renowned black Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. He was arrested and charged — for trying to get into his own house.

“My anger is directed not just at the cops but also at the cowardly Starbucks manager who made the call to the police to begin with,” Jason Johnson wrote in an excellent account for the Root on the Starbucks incident, in which two black men quietly waiting for a friend ended up in handcuffs. “The men and women making these outrageous and unwarranted calls to police, which result in the harassment, unfair prosecution and even death of people of color, need to be found [and] publicly shamed.”

The first U.S. memorial to the victims of lynchings is set to open next week in Montgomery, Ala. Black people in this country have long known that disturbing white Americans in white spaces can mean death. “In the early decades of the 20th century,” author Isabel Wilkerson noted in the New York Times, “a caste system ruled the South with such repression that every four days an African-American was lynched for some perceived breach or mundane accusation — having stolen 75 cents or made off with a mule.” Indeed, between 1877 and 1950, almost 4,000 black people died this way, mostly in Southern states.

What the Starbucks incident has in common with the lynchings of the past — as well as the police brutality and mass incarceration of the present — is the basic fact that black people in America can be physically eliminated at any time, in any place, for little reason — whether that means being kicked out of stores, suspended from school, priced out of their neighborhoods, locked up in jail or put in the grave.

Johnson proposes a legal remedy. “You can get arrested for pulling a fire alarm, making fake bomb threats and making false claims of an alien invasion — why not a false police report that results in death?” he wrote. “We should be pushing for prosecution against these callers just as much as the cops who pull the trigger.”

Maybe something like this could help. It would certainly be better than having the second thoughts come after the fact, after it’s too late. In Sacramento in March, a white neighbor investigating the sound of breaking glass called the police to report a man in a hoodie on his street. Stephon Clark wound up dead, in his grandmother’s back yard, after police fired 20 rounds at him. He was unarmed.

The neighbor has said he never wants to call 911 again.

Starbucks will do what it needs to do to protect its brand. But what is America doing to protect its own citizens of color? Who will train Americans to stop calling the cops on their unarmed black neighbors? Who will train school officials not to use police force on black kids just for being kids? Who will train the convenience-store managers? The mom-and-pop restaurants? And how can we up the social and legal costs for people who make life-threatening decisions by calling the police on peaceful black people?

To echo pop singer Solange Knowles, the fundamental question I am asking white America is: “Where can we be free? Where can we be safe? Where can we be black?”

In 2018, I don’t think America has an answer.

 

[nawghtyhare]

White folks need to admit
That their racism
Is deeply routed in jealousy

 

[harlemtothebronx]

White folks need to admit
That their racism
Is deeply routed in jealousy

Jealousy, as well as fear and guilt. Very warranted fear and guilt.

 

[ninjahood]

Must Recognize Their Privilege

man da daily news aint aint write ... if you're gonna editoralize a headline, put parentheses (just copy and paste da whole joint would b ideal)

 

[hand2handking]

man da daily news aint aint write ... if you're gonna editoralize a headline, put parentheses (just copy and paste da whole joint would b ideal)

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...ing-cops-harmless-black-men-article-1.3943481

 

[ninjahood]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...ing-cops-harmless-black-men-article-1.3943481

hmmm....what time was your screen shot? i bet da author got FLAMED and had to change it.

 

[hand2handking]

at any rate i didnt "editorialize" **** so really you should be apologizing

i included a link where your link at?

for all i know you photoshopped that ****

 

[ninjahood]

at any rate i didnt "editorialize" **** so really you should be apologizing

i included a link where your link at?

i clicked you're link and it it took ne to what i read.

 

[ninjahood]

furthermore...

 

[hand2handking]

ok but the point is i didnt change ****

so you were wrong

you just a stubborn mf

 

[Brownstone]

Scare tactic that is extremely effective. I am terrified of the police. I'd leave my own house if a white guest threatened to call the cops.

 

[ninjahood]

so you were wrong

i clicked your link.

anyways...

 

[hand2handking]

i clicked your link.

anyways...

are you intentionally obtuse?

regardless of what they may or may not have changed the headline to that fact is you accused me of editing it originally which was false

you stubborn as ****

 

[$tatus $ymbol]

As long as we’re coming to the collective consciousness that these displays occur bc whites are inherently racist we’re on the right track.

 

[TURBO UNO]

Starbucks has always seemed like a foo foo she she place to me. I've only ever walked in once because my girl at the time was a coffee junkie. I ordered hot chocolate.

 

[harlemtothebronx]

Oh, this is a ninjahood thread now. Cool.

Ignore that *****.

 

[hand2handking]

California Store Clerk Calls Cops on Black Man Who Asked for Refund; Black Man Gets Beaten Bloody

https://www.theroot.com/california-store-clerk-calls-cops-on-black-man-who-aske-1825396697

The Merced, Calif., Police Department has launched an internal investigation after a black man was brutally beaten and injured while in custody.

William Colbert’s arrest photo shows the 39-year-old’s face bloodied and bruised and one of his eyes swollen shut.

“I have spoken with Mr. Colbert and collected all the statements about what he said had transpired,” Police Capt. Bimley West said on Wednesday, according to the Merced Sun-Star. “This is a formalized internal-affairs investigation into this particular matter.”

To make matters worse, Colbert says that his arrest and subsequent injuries resulted from a store clerk’s decision to call the cops on him after he demanded a refund.

The incident occurred back on March 12.

Colbert, who works as a welder and pipe fitter, said that he had just left Mercy Medical Center after having an allergic reaction to medication when he went to the ampm store to buy some tea.

That was when he got into an argument over payment with the clerk and demanded to have the money put back on his credit card. The argument persisted until the clerk called the police, claiming that Colbert was armed. Colbert denies having any sort of weapon on him.

When police arrived at the scene, Colbert was outside the store, having been locked out by the clerk. Colbert recognized one of the officers as Joseph Opinski, who he said went to Merced College with him. Opinski went inside to talk to the clerk and then, according to Colbert, the other officer, whom he identified as William McComb, rushed him “like a bat out of hell.”

“Why would you be arresting me when I haven’t committed any crime?” Colbert recalled asking officers.

McComb and at least two other officers “bum-rushed” him, he said, throwing him face-first into a puddle. Colbert insists that he wasn’t resisting arrest, but he was also trying to get his face out of the water so he could breathe.

“I’m afraid to fight for my life,” he said.

But his troubles didn’t end there.

Eventually he was let up and put in the back of a cruiser in handcuffs, but the cuffs were so tight that he started to lose feeling in his hands.

Acknowledging that “I’m no saint,” Colbert said he kicked the squad car’s door to tell the cops that he needed the cuffs loosened. That’s when officers reportedly dragged him out of the car and pressed their knees into his back.

“There should be no reason I come out of that cop car,” he said.

Colbert started to request medical attention, whereupon McComb insinuated that he knew Oopinski because he was a “snitch bytch gang member,” which Colbert said made him “irate.”

“I don’t want him going to the hospital with me,” Colbert recalled. “I’m feeling violated. ... He’s the one that caused this.”

McComb, however, did stay in the hospital room with him. An annoyed Colbert acknowledged being “obnoxious” toward the officers, calling them “cowards” and calling one a “bytch.”

Colbert received a splint for his thumb at the hospital and was taken from the hospital to the county jail. There they were greeted by another officer, whom Colbert identified as Brandon Wilkins.

That was when yet another altercation occurred. Colbert said that officers “aggressively” shoved him from behind unnecessarily, and so he did what he could, which was step aside as an officer attempted to push him, causing the officer to stumble.

The 39-year-old said that he went to the ground to avoid any more trouble, but officers still began kicking and punching him from behind. One officer reportedly raked his arm with handcuffs.

“This is the **** people talk about on the news that I think will never happen to me,” Colbert said. “I’m thankful to be alive.”

Ultimately, Colbert was handed over to deputies at the county jail, only to be sent back to the hospital for treatment. Still, he is facing charges of resisting arrest, threatening an officer and battery on an officer.

Capt. West has declined to officially release the names of the officers being investigated in Colbert’s case. The Sun-Star’s request for surveillance footage from the jail was denied by the Merced County Counsel Office because of the ongoing investigation.