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| Photo from police-car dash cam |
From the Dallas Morning News:
Dorothy Bland: I was caught ‘walking while black.’Please read this link and watch the video.
Police chief: No, officers were doing their jobs.
The Washington Post calls the video a racial ‘Rorschach test’.
Your interpretation?
Quick first reaction:
ReplyDeletePerson of unknown race, religion, gender and origin walking/bouncing down the street going the wrong way, flailing arms as if there were a drug interaction going on, avoiding the sidewalk.
Cops walk up, show concern for her safety and then ask for ID.
I at first thought the ID question a bit much, but then realized they might still have thought that she was having a medical emergency requiring help.
I know personally that it's often difficult know whether what's going on behind the eyeballs is normal or if medical attention is required.
But this woman is a college indoctrinated black woman and her programmed response is to see police oppression.
Ed,
DeleteI think that asking for ID is standard operating procedure.
Ed,
DeleteShe was avoiding the sidewalk. I wonder why.
Agree with both your comments.
DeleteThe officers were courteous and professional. However, as an olive skinned white man who has been stopped for no reason while walking on the sidewalk in the South and restrained by the police, any situation in which a citizen is stopped and questioned is serious. If the officers needed her name and date of birth to make a formal record, then they should have been clearer that she was violating a law and they would be issuing a "warning" citation.
I am completely and utterly on the side of the police generally and in this situation. However, anyone who has had their rights violated by the police is understandably touchy about being stopped.
In a time when political agitators are intentionally inflaming mistrust of police and hatred between blacks and whites, it's easy to take one side and ignore the abuses which cause the other side to have a hair-trigger response.
Freedom means the right NOT to have to show your papers or risk arrest. Having to carry government ID at all times is fascist, not American.
PS Why was she walking in the street? And why do some people who exercise have to act like idiots with chicken-arm-flapping? I don't know, but she has the right to flap her arms if that's what she wants to do. Walking in the street, no.
Alec,
DeleteIf the officers needed her name and date of birth to make a formal record, then they should have been clearer that she was violating a law and they would be issuing a "warning" citation.
Perhaps they did not issue a warning citation because she's black.
Alec,
DeleteHaving to carry government ID at all times is fascist, not American.
Agreed!
Of course, she wasn't taken into custody for not having any ID with her.
Perhaps asking for I.D. is a mere part of filing a report. The Dean of Journalism certainly filed a "report" on them.
ReplyDeleteWhen I watched the video, when she asked to take a picture with the officers, I KNEW she was going to make them pay for DARING to stop her.
The police did not humiliate her. Their tone was civil. They were polite and it was essentially a non-event. In reading about the story, the lady immediately went to the mayor's home and bitched - including noting that she lived in a "golf community". (Hmmm, a bit of arrogance?) She then proceeded to slander the police in columns which she wrote for the press.
She also made a comment about her own Hoodie. The police did not ask her about the Hoodie. It seems that she had already profiled herself.
Media lies need to be deconstructed. Not supported.
Liberals LOVE to think that they can "dvine" other people's intentions through their actions. Giving other people the "benefit of the doubt" is NOT in their nature. Charity is what giving people the "benefit of the doubt" is ALL about. Secular liberal "subjects" exhibit no capacity whatsoever to exhibit charity. They ALWAYS just "assume the worst."
ReplyDeleteTRUE STORY
ReplyDeleteBack when I was in college, I was stopped by a police officer because, in his words: "You have a college sticker on your car. Besides, I don't like your looks. You look suspicious."
I'm a pale-skinned Caucasian. The traffic stop had nothing to do with race nor did it have to do with any traffic violation.
So, what was it about my looks did he not like? My black leather jacket with fringe and my "hippie" hair to my waist.
To be fair, I have to admit that my eyes had a "dreamy" look -- pupils always dilated because of incipient cataracts even at that young age.
The officer intended to search the car. I said, "I want my attorney."
The officer sneered and said, "And just who is your attorney?"
I gave the name and rattled off the family attorney's phone number. The officer backed off -- because the attorney was well known and well respected.
So glad you had your wits about you even then!
DeleteThis story's another example of how we need to constantly step back and not take the "pre-digested" left and right positions handed to us by people who want to separate us all into easily manipulated tribes.
Truth is clear when we find it. Lies have many gradations.
Alec,
DeleteWell, I was driving my parents' car. Dad kept an axe in the trunk. Sometimes a sapling fell onto our long, private driveway, and Dad had to chop his way up or down the driveway.
I was also a bit concerned about what Dad might have stowed in the glove compartment.
Read the article. Watched the video. Everyone involved in the video was very well behaved. Dorothy, herself,spoke well, appeared calm, confident, courteous, cooperative, even friendly. The police played their roles with professional courtesy and restraint.
ReplyDeleteSo far so good, HOWEVER, I got irritated with the police when they insisted on seeing her identification. If they'd had used common sense and had a modicum of discretion, they would have known the woman was perfectly all right the minute she spoke to them calmly and courteously.
I don't believe the police really were concerned for Dorothy's safety. It's very likely they used that as a trumped up pretext for stopping her. Flapping your arms as you walk for exercise is a fairly standard practice because it's supposed to enhances the cardiovascular benefit of the time you spend walking. Also, there was little or no traffic on that quiet residential street.
If the officers had stopped after it became obvious that Dorothy was not a nefarious character and in no way a threat to society, neither she nor I should have had a problem with it, but even though they were polite, they PRESSED her for ID.
At that point I realized this was not a :friendly" gesture on the part of the police. They did NOT have to report the incident. That was gratuitous, and yes –– offensive.
I'm so Caucasian I'm practically translucent. ;-) No one could ever find fault with my appearance or my demeanor, but I've always been an odd duck who has little respect for mindless adherence to convention. In my younger years I was stopped several times for walking in my own neighborhood by the police in my upper-middle-class suburban home town, because it was late at night and past every NORMAL person's bedtime.
Now, I want to tell you, as freedom-loving, natural-born American I resented this at the time. and resent it to this day. So I fully understand Dorothy's annoyance. Neither she nor I were caught doing anything "wrong" or even faintly suspicious, but we were stopped anyway. That's WRONG.
I do think Dorothy overreacted, however, and because her field is JOURNALISM it's likely she chose to exploit the situation and try to make it a Cause Celebre.
If that is true, I certainly don't support it, BUT if the police had had good sense to begin with, this "incident" would never have happened.
A simple, "Good morning, Ma'am, you'd be safer if you walked on the other side of the road facing the traffic. We wouldn't want you to get hurt," should have been more than enough. And then they should have LET IT GO at that.
FT,
DeleteI understand all your points and strongly agree with your last paragraph. I don't agree with all your points. One can't always immediately know character in the way you mention. And there may be a protocol about ID.
But forget about snap judgment and protocol. She should have been on the sidewalk, not in the street!
She didn't stay at the edge of the street, either. What was up her moving into the middle of the street? Did she sense a car behind her?
FT,
DeleteQuestion for you...
Are the two officers racists? The WaPo says that this video is a Rorschach test for racism.
AOW, what do you think the Post meant by calling it a Rorschach test for racism?
DeleteAlec,
DeleteTwo possibilities:
1. Discerning people see the officers as racist.
2. Those who don't see the racism of the officers are subliminal racists (have a personality which is racist).
Wikipedia offers this:
...Some psychologists use this test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning. It has been employed to detect underlying thought disorder, especially in cases where patients are reluctant to describe their thinking processes openly....
More at the link.
Alec,
DeleteDo you have a different interpretation of what the WaPo meant?
I agree with you.
DeleteThe comment feeds into the polarization that the Morning News columnist who said it, Jacquielynn Floyd, claims to be against.
It’s a subtle manipulation based on an appeal to intellectual authority (psychology, Dr Rorschach).
And it forces those of us who want to discuss more important things to defend ourselves against incipient racism.
Yet again, across the country discussion proceeds along pre-determined tracks.
I.D. is standard asking policy I do believe. I had pulled over with a flat tire some distance from the road and was required to supply I.D. registration and insurance. Since I am white I can't claim racism. Should I have had to do it? I don't know, and I don't care. If they can get the one out of three who doesn't carry car insurance in my State I am in.
ReplyDeleteFirst impression: She did this on purpose to provoke a situation.
ReplyDeleteI agree with others that the only thing that stood out was asking her for ID. Not that she was black, but in routine incidents it smacks of "show me your papers."
You should only have to show ID if you're making a witness report or if they are arresting you.
First, first impression: Flapping her arms like that, she could been mentally ill.
ReplyDeleteA strange hobby of mine is bicycling around homeless areas and blending in (yes, I really do blend in. Do-gooders routinely offer me sleeping bags, water, food, etc, and I interact easily with the homeless.)
I could write some good stories based on what I saw. A few weeks ago, a white middle-aged woman was striding up a busy street flapping her arms, screaming and raving. She came into the park, still ranting, dug into a trash can, throwing garbage everywhere, and then kept doing down to the railroad tracks.
Cops have to stop when they see something like, and the police in the video were courteous, realized she was not a threat and possessed of her faculties, and they adjusted appropriately. No harm and no foul.
SF,
DeleteShe was flapping her arms so much that she looked as if she were trying to fly.
The way she was working her arms was nothing like the way I wave my arms while walking and exercising: arms extended to make big circles and a weight-lifting motion involving flexing the elbows.
Just sayin'.
I do not carry I.D. when walking in my neighborhood. But neither do I flap my arms or weave a bit on the road. But I do believe this Dean of Journalism from University of North Texas created a political construct which did not rise to the occasion for her reporting out of the event. Black people walking? Come on! Give it a break! I am tired of the Chicken Little acts. The sky did not fall because a professor was treated like ordinary citizen.
ReplyDeleteIn a day in which idiots create hashtags hoping to become viral sensations, Ms. Bland is just part of the greater herd. Nothing special about her. But UNT deserves better. She engaged yellow journalism. As of late, I am sick of the genre.
Prince,
DeleteShe was looking for her "Cambridge professor" moment?
Whatever.
What she wrote later was indeed yellow journalism. As a professor of journalism, doesn't she know better than to do that?
Liberals lie!
ReplyDeleteOh also, there were damned sidewalks too.
DeleteThe moment this woman stepped from the taxpayer funded sidewalk, the issue became one of public safety. The police were correct to stop and make an inquiry of the woman. They were polite. As SF said, no harm, no foul. As to the ID issue, suppose she is doing her exercise routine when suddenly struck with severe chest pains. Getting her to a hospital would be priority number one; determining prior medical history would be a close second. How can they do that when they don't know who she is? If she is unconscious ... a next of kin would be able to direct efforts to treat her. Always carry your ID.
ReplyDeleteMustang is right. PUBLIC SAFETY... Hers among others... This was, as said earlier her attempt to get her 15 minutes of fame. It didn't work out too well when the truth came out. UNT should fire her... Plain and simple. She is a disgrace to the school now.
ReplyDeleteWhile I would agree that it appears the officers were nothing but polite....I don't carry ID when I run; and hallway serious runners will always choose asphalt over concrete surfaces on which to run. It looked to me that she was doing a cool-down after running.
ReplyDeleteNot really sure why they felt the need to stop her.
She looked like she slipped her meds.
DeleteAnother driver complained to the police about her almost getting hit by him by her behavior.
THAT would have had some ramifications for the driver, therefore her activity was more serious than depicted.
Ed - I disagree. That's not an uncommon motion for runners cooling down.
DeleteCI,
DeleteReally? I've never seen that motion before in the kind of context you mention.
Yep. I'm not really a fan of it myself....but the arm windmill can be found in military warm-up/cool-don routines....as well as to limber or improve circulation for people with shoulder or arm injuries. I'm not saying that this is definitely what she was engaging in....but it's highly plausible.
DeleteNonetheless, she was endangering motorists.
DeleteIf one hit her, their livelihood would have been endangered.
The phrasing you've chosen makes it appear that you would support running along the road to be a minor criminal act. Am I wrong?
DeleteRunning on the wrong side of the road endangers her, as the officers pointed out. We don't have sidewalks here so we run and walk in the street, but she had a sidewalk, meant for that activity.
DeleteAround here, we have streets with sidewalks and streets without sidewalks.
DeleteI used to do a lot of walking for exercise, and when I did so, I always used a sidewalk when it was available -- even in neighborhoods with almost zero traffic on those streets.
Prolonged running on concrete [sidewalks] is horrible for knee and ankle joints. Asphalt isn't great, but far more giving than sidewalks.
DeleteCan we just admit that the woman is a liar? She crafted a lie and there was intentional malice involved in recounting her "perception". Lies hurt people. Her intention was to damage the careers of the involved officers.
ReplyDeleteI have little patience for children who lie. But I have even less when it involves adults.
Knowledge Bass would do well to learn how to write using articles and linking verbs.
ReplyDeleteGiven the exaggerated Google+ photo and the idiotic attempt at writing "urban".....'Knowledge Bass' is a transparent troll.
ReplyDeleteAnd there you go. Nobody writes that abominably by nature. Troll.
DeleteThe goal of these people is to "poison the well". Thank you AOW for removing their deceptive garbage. It would be even better if you could get rid of their links and images. They are anything but harmless annoyances.
DeleteAlex,
Delete"Garbage" is the polite word for it.
Garbage it was....but it was so poorly over the top...so immaturely thought out....that I found it sort of entertaining. Were but there more of his ilk arrayed against the forces of liberty........
DeleteCI,
DeleteYes, entertaining to a point. But too many times and too much waste of bandwidth that I pay for.
Thanks AOW. You excised "Speedy" too. Good.
DeleteCI, they are getting more "over the top" because that's part of their ridicule. "How far can we go?", they ask themselves. Pretty far. They're a lot of them - or a lesser number who get around. Some of them are much more sophisticated. The underlying message usually includes anti-black and anti-Jewish or a Holocaust-denial/historical revisionist idea. In this case, one "troll" was anti-black. The other was violently anti-Jewish, as seen via the google profile.
No disagreement there.
DeleteAND she is a "working professional". Imagine what kind of professionals we'll have in another 10 years.
ReplyDeleteThey treated her with more or as much respect than I've ever seen anyone treated by cops.
I saw an item in the news that was titled 'xx% of black millenials say they know someone who has been abused by the police" I said "Yea, and 99% of those Fantacized were abused by the police."
Feeding frenzy of the losers. The lure of easy money.
"I don’t remember getting a decent answer before one of the officers asked me where I lived and for identification."
ReplyDeleteThey told her all about walking on the wrong side before asking for ID.
AHA! The VIDEO has been REMOVED!!!
ReplyDeleteNow we have nothing but fading memory, deep and abiding prejudice, assumption, conjecture and agenda-driven propaganda to guide us to the truth.
Dorothy may very well have brought this on herself by daring to complain about the way she was accosted and questioned by the gendarmes, –– after all there's nothing worse than an "Uppity Nigger," ain't that right? ;-) Nevertheless, the burning desire on the part of many here to find fault with Dorothy Bland is so obvious I can practically smell it.
The VIDEO, –– unless it was "edited," of course, –– doesn't LIE. I'm with CI on this (rare for us, I know). I've never known joggers to use a sidewalk; almost invariably they prefer Macadam. Joggers are in the same category with bicyclists. Both constitute a danger to ordinary, slow-moving pedestrians –– and vice versa.
In this stupid, overblown, basically trivial incident NO ONE was at fault, and EVERYONE was at fault.
I'll say this: If a lean, muscular white, blond, blue-eyed college kid with a crewcut had been doing what Dorothy did, the gendarmes would very likely have taken no notice of it other than to give the guy a friendly wave, perhaps.
The ASSUMPTION that any Negro in a predominantly white, middle-class American neighborhood MUST be up to no good is deeply rooted –– and largely justified, I'm sad to say.
I can empathize with a person like Dean Dorothy Bland, but that doesn't obviate the fact that a HUGE proportion of young Negro males DO represent a threat to decent people of ALL races, and it should NEVER favor the idea that ALL Negroes should be held IMMUNE from having to take personal responsibility for their criminal, anti-social behavior.
FT,
DeleteProbably not a friendly wave. But it might well be that the officers DID notice this individual because of race.
What we do not know: much about this particular neighborhood,
FreeThinke, gendarmes is apt. As is your comment about the removal of source material. The fact that this crime against thought is so generally accepted with equanimity says something important.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a post about this some time back, The relentless scrubbing of the internet continues. Won't post the link as the title itself is the real point.
Alec
Alec,
DeleteIn the last few months, the videos relating to some stories I've been following have disappeared. Scrubbing is clearly in play.
Get in the habit of saving everything you might want for reference later. If you use Firefox, you can add the "Video Download Helper" free addon which makes it trivial to save most videos.
DeleteAlec,
DeleteThanks for that tip about Firefox.
FT has pointed out to us that the video has been removed.
ReplyDeleteWhy? The YouTube message says that the account was terminated. By whom?
I will check the story in the Dallas Morning News to see if the video is still THERE.
Aha!
DeleteHere is the video: http://youtu.be/xh_OvluMqxI
Youtube is notorious for citing "offensive material", "complaints", "takedown requests", and "copyright violation", or no reason at all, for blocking content providers or terminating them.
DeleteVimeo is said to be better, but I don't really know.
Alec
Who the hell had that video pulled? I smell a rat ...
ReplyDeleteI HAVE NOW REPOSTED THE VIDEO.
ReplyDelete"What was up her moving into the middle of the street? Did she sense a car behind her?"
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting question. I used to walk 4 miles to get my bus after work. I went on a well travelled dirt foot path, major street sidewalks and side street residential sidewalks that had many other single pedestrians, I've always been a very fast walker and passed most people. I also made a noise to be heard so I didn't surprise some old lady coming up on her. As often as not people I approached wandered over to the middle of the sidewalk, blocking easy passage, even before I scraped my throat. At first I thought these people were "that type" - you know, the ones who would plant their grocery cart across the aisle so no one can pass. But it happened so much I formed another theory. I suspect people have an instinctive move that kicks in - to protect or dominate?? - it was almost funny to watch it happen. When I saw this woman wander out into the street - well, you know what I thought of!
As for this woman? Yes, a lot of people run in the street because the asphalt is easier on the knees than concrete. We see that all over here. But the key is running. Many never face the traffic.
It's hard to understand why she wasn't, or wasn't on the sidewalk in the first place. Just seems odd. Which, of course, is why the police stopped her! I probably would have.
Mr. B added that his boy scout training was to use that motion to show you needed assistance.
Interesting point from Mr. B!
DeleteI didn't see that she was wearing earbuds, did you?
As for asphalt, I suppose that's it's easier on the knees when one is walking as well as when running. But, honestly, I haven't noticed a difference between the asphalt and the sidewalk surfaces. Then, again, I never jog. Bad for the retina!
If I were one of the cops I would have just told her that she might be in danger walking with the traffic in the street. Otherwise, i would have left her to determine her own fate in the gene pool. Why do cops need to see someone's ID? This is not Russia, or it didn't use to be.
ReplyDeleteHey, Bob!
DeleteNice to see you again.
Thanks for weighing in on this topic. You have a valid point. So, why didn't the officers do exactly as you suggested?