Raising Two Americans

My friend Tyrone Walker once told me, as part of a much larger discussion, “Mike, you have no idea what it’s like to be a black man in S.C. and look up and see blue lights in your rear-view mirror.”

Tyrone is a journalist, a photographer for a major daily newspaper. He’s also a sergeant in the S.C. National Guard and has done a tour of duty each in Afghanistan and Iraq. But in the late 1990s, he was still AFRAID of the police.

Initially, I dismissed his comment as exaggeration. Eventually, I came to understand better where he was coming from.

But now, there’s not a doubt in my mind he’s right. What happened Friday proved it.

A S.C. State Trooper who chased a “suspect” and purposely hit him with his car was acquitted of civil rights violations unanimously by a jury Friday and will soon be reinstated. Here’s the State newspaper’s story on the acquittal. It includes links to earlier coverage of the story, as well as the trooper’s dash-cam video.

In reality, the suspect’s race shouldn’t be an issue. The fact that he struck him on purpose should be all that matters. And he did hit him on purpose. He admitted it in his own words. Here’s a quote from his dash-cam recording:

Garren: “Hey, I nailed the —- out of him. I nailed the —- out of him when he hit that —- field. He went flying up in the air.”

Deputy: “You hit him?”

Garren: “Yeah, I hit him.  I was trying to hit him.”

The trooper hitting the suspect doesn’t prove he’s racist. Just that he’s too lazy to do his job correctly and dumb enough to hit the suspect on purpose and admit it.

But what should scare the hell out of people is that 12 honest citizens sat in a room, looked at the tape and concluded he didn’t mean to hit anyone.

You take a look and let me know if he was guilty ..

This entry was posted on October 7, 2008 at 12:59 am and is filed under TV with tags racism, S.C.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.