The Making of A Great America Uprooting the Spirit of Racism

This book bubble contains excerpts from two chapters: "African Americans and the Police" and "What the War on Drugs Became"

African Americans and the Police

The Police a Black and White Experience

In his discussion with Pastor Carl Lentz, T.D. Jakes said this about police brutality against African Americans and the changes that he would like to see:

 “It's not a mystery… we want to grow old, we want to live. We want better education, we want equal access to opportunities’…The famous preacher added that he is not asking for black people to be immune from arrest, in as much as no person, regardless of race, should be treated as above the law. ‘We are just asking not to be tried on the sidewalk,’ he said. ‘That's all, just don't arrest me, try me, convict me and kill me on the sidewalk.’  (A Discussion on Racism | Carl Lentz & Bishop T.D. Jakes | Hillsong East Coast, 2020)

What the War on Drugs Became

Traffic Stops

“More than 20 million Americans are stopped each year for traffic violations, making this one of the most common ways in which the public interacts with the police.” (Emma Pierson, 2020)

Some of the most shocking deaths of African Americans at the hands of police have occurred during traffic stops, encouraged by the war on drugs. I have mentioned Philando Castille’s death several times. In a routine traffic stop in 2017, Officer Jeronimo Yanez shot Castille multiple times, killing him, while he was complying with instructions. In defense of his actions, Yanez claimed, “that the smell of marijuana led him to fear for his life.” (Ingraham, 2017)

In this graphic cell phone video from April 2015, Walter Scott can be seen running away from an incident that was triggered by a traffic stop. https://nyti.ms/3hz2WjS Like the August 2020 shooting of Jacob Blake, Scott was shot in the back. (Michael S. Schmidt, 2015) The 33-year old police officer, rather than chase down the unarmed 50-year old Scott, fired his weapon eight times. Unfortunately, Walter Scott did not survive his wounds.

WASHINGTON — A white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with murder on Tuesday after a video surfaced showing him shooting in the back and killing an apparently unarmed black man while the man ran away.

The officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, said he had feared for his life because the man had taken his stun gun in a scuffle after a traffic stop on Saturday. A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times as the man, Walter L. Scott, 50, fled. The North Charleston mayor announced the state charges at a news conference Tuesday evening. (Video Shows Fatal Police Shooting, 2015)

The police officer, Michael Slager, was later found guilty of murder and sentenced to twenty years in prison. (Meridith Edwards, 2017)

The events of Sandra Bland’s high-profile death were initiated by a trivial traffic stop that the officer escalated into a much larger conflict. She was involved in a “pretextual or investigatory stop.” (Blanks, 2016)

Pretextual stop example Video: https://rebrand.ly/PretextualStop

This type of stop “is a common police tactic to investigate potential criminal activity—particularly drug possession and trafficking—in situations where there is no legal reason to suspect a crime is occurring.” (Mark H. Moore, 1989)

“Pretext stops allow officers to stop people for one violation with the intent of trying to uncover a separate violation. Pretext stops occur when officers pull drivers for minor traffic violations with the aim of searching their cars for drugs…

Designating certain geographical areas as “hotspot” zones for drug activity is another tactic that increases citizen-police encounters by granting officers broad authority to stop anyone passing through the targeted area.” (Harris, 2020)

Here’s an extensive outline in Sandra Bland’s case from the traffic stop, through her arrest, death in jail, and the investigation that followed.