Comments on police profiling
Both Toula Drimonis and Rima Elkouri have pointed comments on the handcuffing of a Black SUV owner on the weekend.
A lie that’s been noted was the initial police claim that the vehicle door had visible evidence of tampering, as happens during some thefts, which they claimed was the reason they pounced on the man who approached it. Later it was reported that the vehicle, quite new, had no such marks at all.
Blork 12:06 on 2022-11-08 Permalink
I’m sure I’ll take some shit for this, but I’m calling it as I see it while attempting to maintain objectivity.
First of all, the fact that the cops apparently lied about the “visible damage” on the car indicates they’re covering up, or at least deflecting. They screwed up and they know it. I have no doubt that there’s some level of racism involved here, and it could easily be labeled as “systemic.” And the fact that they had handcuffs but no key is just plain dumb and incompetent. (All handcuffs use the same key; they’re intended for short-term attended restraint only, so they don’t need unique keys. So having cuffs and no key is just plain bad planning and is likely a protocol infraction.)
But as for the rest of it, the cops were playing by-the-book from what I can see in the video. They remained calm, which is the most important thing given that the car owner was agitated, and (rightfully) angry. That alone is a textbook example of doing it right. While their demeanour was somewhat dismissive when it should have been apologetic, at least they were calm and kept things calm. The alternative is escalation, which would most definitely have ended badly, with bodily violence or worse. (Rima Elkouri opens her piece with “On aurait dit une scène tirée d’un mauvais film policier américain.” No, if it were a bad American cop movie, the car owner would have been on the ground with a cop kneeling on his neck, or bleeding out from gunshots.)
There’s a comment in Toula’s piece about the fact that the cop still had the car owner by the arm, even though he knew he was innocent at that point. That’s just cop training. When you have an agitated person in handcuffs, you keep them close and hold them by the arm. Doesn’t matter what race the person is, or what state of mind, or whether they’re guilty or not; that’s just caution and (believe it or not) de-escalation.
And as to the cops’ demeanour, I did the mental exercise of imagining being in their shoes with an angry man in handcuffs yelling and people filming — let me be more precise: I imagined a more cocky version of myself in that situation (cops tend to be cockier than I’ll ever be). How would I have reacted? Let’s forget about the fact that it was a black man wrongfully put in handcuffs for a minute. Imagine it’s your teenage kid yelling at you because they feel like you’re being “unfair.” That demeanour the cops showed is basically exactly the same as what a parent would show while waiting for their teenager to calm down so they can talk to them. Is it condescending? Yes. Is it human nature under the circumstances? Probably.
I think there’s something akin to the Kuleshov effect going on here, in which the meaning we derive from a scene is affected by its proximity to something else. Intercut those condescending cops with a yelling teenager and we’re all like “yeah, been there, done that” but intercut the same thing with an angry black man in handcuffs and we’re all like “those cops are racists!”
So yes, bad policing for sure. No doubt. Most likely racial profiling that set the whole thing off. But I’m not sure we need to read malfeasance or racism into every little gesture that followed.
And no, this is not me “defending the cops.”
Blork 12:19 on 2022-11-08 Permalink
TL;DR: the wrong-doing was in accusing the car owner in the first place, and then not having a key to the handcuffs. The rest of it seems to be not worthy of comment (at least based on what I saw in the video).
Ephraim 11:04 on 2022-11-09 Permalink
@Blork – There was no need for the handcuffs in the first place. All they needed to do was identify the man from his driver’s licence. At that point, what was he going to do, run? And to what end? Seriously, they have the man’s address and name. It should have taken them all of 2 minutes to verify the driver’s licence, address and run the registration (especially because he had the keys.)
Seriously, these cops need to be retrained… at their own cost. In fact, that should be a new punishment given out by the commission. You are suspended without pay while you are retrained in standard police measures and if you don’t do and pass the retraining, you lose your pension. Have a nice day!