The Dean of the University of North Texas, school of Journalism, accuses the Corinth Police Department of profiling, stopping her for no reason and being part of a tradition to kill blacks or otherwise make them disappear, in the Dallas Morning News. Except the Camera doesn’t support the narrative.
The claim is she was walking through her upper middle class neighborhood early one morning. She claims she was stopped for walking while black. The officers spoke with her, asked for identification but accepted her verbal identification rather than insisting on a physical identification. She says she was not given a reasonable explanation for the stop. During the course of the stop she took photos of the officers and their patrol car because people like her have been killed under similar circumstances. She complained that the officers didn’t pay proper deference to her Harvard Hoodie and recognize her obvious merit.
According to the police Chief who reviewed the patrol car video the circumstances were far different. The story seems to indicate that the good professor was on a roll and may have paid an early morning visit to the Mayor at his residence. If that was the case then Chief’s dance card for Saturday was booked.
The patrol car video shows the good professor walking down the street, hood up and as it turns out wearing ear phones. A pick-up truck followed her at a walking pace and, at one point stopped, waiting to pass. The officers saw no indication that she was aware of the pick-up truck or later the patrol car. State law states that pedestrians must use sidewalks where provided. When sidewalks are not provided they shall walk facing traffic. More on this in a moment. The fact that she made no effort to avoid traffic indicated a need for intervention.
The most obvious explanation, exercising in the street, is probably the proper explanation, however there other possibilities: crazy and unaware of surroundings, suicidal, drunk or high. Unlike the good professor, these officers did not prejudge the situation and made the contact. If it was the last call of dog watch then the priority is to make the contact, point out the problem, suggest a solution and leave with “have a nice day” echoing in the background. It is not to write a ticket, nor dick around with a bigot.
If these guys were day shift, and that may be the case, since she was running later than normal. The goal was pretty much the same, make a contact, talk about traffic safety and get on down the road. Who wants to deal with a bigot that early in the morning?
She asserts they stopped her with lights and siren. The video will tell all. As emergency equipment is activated a symbol is displayed on the video. So watching the video you can tell what time the stop was initiated, what equipment was in operation and what transpired.
The first thing one observes is that the contact took place in the street and there were sidewalks on either side. This is obviously a neighborhood street, but cops do the same thing every time, so the default is to get out of the street. So Ms. Professor was in violation of the traffic code and therefore fair game for a stop. The only group that routinely amasses citations for “Pedestrian in the Roadway” are streetwalkers and traffic safety is the excuse rather than the reason.
Cops do the same thing the same way. A cop contacts a suspect, “good afternoon, morning, evening, officer So-So, the reason you were stopped is ____, is there any emergency? May I see your driver’s license? Is everything correct on your license? This spiel is automatic and done without thinking, the officer may not even care if the information requested is forthcoming. The person being contacted is trying to process multiple requests, move to comply or not and provide a response. The next ten seconds will dictate how the stop progresses and the officer is like a sponge soaking it all in.
The officer requested identification and received a verbal statement. He was content with that because that is all that is required. The fact that she is a taxpayer, bought a Harvard sweatshirt and is privileged is not germane to the conversation. From a cop’s standpoint one doesn’t need a kitchen pass to walk through a neighborhood.
The video shows that the officers offered an explanation for the stop. The key takeaway here is that unless one parrots the bigot and provides a word for word rendition that coincides with how the bigot views things, no explanation is reasonable.
The officers initiated the contact as a courtesy. What they got was a whole lot of bluster and bullshit from a bigot who doesn’t like cops. They followed through on their intended course without validating the professor’s prejudices. They received their just reward by being abused in the Dallas newspaper by a person who used her position to mischaracterize events and mislead the public. The professor is entitled to her own opinion, she is not entitled to her own facts. How many times does a liar have to be proven a liar before their word is meaningless? I guess it is a good thing, for journalists, that there isn’t a journalistic equivalent of an internal affairs.
The next time you throw down your newspaper, or get up to kick the TV because the news got it wrong again, remember this professor is running a journalism school.