mekka okereke :verified:
Valuable lessons were learned, but not the ones that the mother thought would be learned.🤷🏿♂️
* She learned that millions of Black people haven't been "making it all up" about police mistreatment
* She learned why US Black folk almost never call the police, for any reason
* Her son learned that his own mom is not safe. Her lack of understanding of US racism makes her dangerous
* She's probably going to learn that this does not meet the definition of police misconduct
Diligence Jones
@mekkaokereke
This is literally how those cops and EMTs in Colorado killed that Black autistic kid.
I'm sorry that VT mom is probably traumatized by what she caused to happen to her son but where TF has she been for the past decade?!?
BLM wasn't just a bunch of black folks making a ruckus for no reason.
Ugh. That kind of ignorance is deadly.
mekka okereke :verified:
These are the tough questions that I wish we didn't have to struggle with as a country. And yes, that is a legitimately tough question. There's no clear answer.
The calculus we have to do is: Is the probability of a police officer making this situation better, greater than the probability of a police officer making it worse?
Often after an accident, people are concussed,
Which means they will be slow to follow commands. With the wrong US cop, this can be fatal.
Jay Shirley
@mekkaokereke We pull off, tell my son to call 911 and report it in. A few minutes later, black dude stops. Immediately starts telling me I should ask the driver (young white woman) if she wanted me to call and I was “harassing her by making an unwanted call”. She was dazed, not making a ton of sense. I ask her and she says “it’s ok, yeah” but not assertively (she was absolutely showing signs of a concussion or impairment).
What’s your read? Was I wrong? If not, advice on deescalating?
Jay Shirley
@mekkaokereke I’d love your (and others!) take on a related situation I had recently. Driving home with the family, entering a roundabout in our neighborhood and a Tesla from the oncoming side missed it, jumped the whole thing, hit a cement light pole and jumped itself 15 feet in the air. Visible airbag deployment, massive damage.
Joe Cooper 💾
@brunogirin @mekkaokereke @jshirley in a lot of places police are considered a "first responder" for any 911 call. If there's a police unit closer than an ambulance or firetruck, you get police first, even if they have no training for the problem they're responding to. In America there's bipartisan agreement that police are superheroes who should be invited to every stressful situation, just in case someone needs to be shot or beaten.
Bruno Girin
@mekkaokereke @jshirley
I have an additional question from the perspective of a non American: why would the police show up as a result of an emergency call for a traffic accident? Shouldn't it be an ambulance that shows up rather than a police car? Or am I misunderstanding how emergency services work in the US?
Paul Cantrell
@mekkaokereke @encthenet @jshirley These are indeed the questions. And our system of policing makes the answer far, far harder than it ever ought to be.
For anyone with muddy feelings about all this, I •strongly• recommend listening to this feature (page text has summary, but audio is where it’s at):
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/freedom-house-ambulance-service/
Listen specifically to the stories of the first paramedics •fighting• police to save lives (~22:30). It’s jaw-dropping. The whole thing is.
myrmepropagandist
Thinking about how baked in to the folk story (Leave it to Beaver! Andy Griffin...) of a child having a "talking to" with a wise stern reasonable police officer are parallel lessons:
* Power structures must be respected, but ultimately will recognize your humanity.
* The law is good and the police are good, an extension of adults who give you firm boundaries because they love and value you.
* You belong in this community and power structures will guide & support you.
myrmepropagandist
It's pretty wild to expect police to be this way, but in some schools young people can't even expect this much from teachers.
There are a host of reason for this that go beyond just "bad teachers." Schools set up in a way that makes this impossible. Just like police departments.
I'm certain these officers were following "policy" in their minds and that, had they made an exception for a child with clear adult support, (who wasn't wealthy or white) they could have consequences.
Scott 🇯🇲 🇺🇸
@mekkaokereke Vermont eh? One of this country’s whitest places? Her son is adopted, black, *and* has special needs? A trifecta of “oh no”. He’s fortunate not to be dead. Unfortunate to be the adoptee of someone who means well but isn’t equipped to parent that particular child. The article doesn’t mention an adoptive father, so if this is a single parenting endeavor that’s even worse.
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