It seems that police
actions against minorities have proliferated in the past few months in the
United States. As true as that may look like with the incidents involving
Michael Brown, Garner and many others, many who have been victims of such
actions say otherwise. Barack Obama said recently, “racial tensions surfacing ‘probably
is healthy’.” That is because according to the president, this kind of mistrust
is “hardly new.”
I agree with him.
There is a higher
interest from the media to these interactions between the police and minorities.
It came a little late, but several individuals around the United States have
been saved from better media coverage, and cameras used by patrol vehicles. Seattle,
WA. is the most recent example. The Washington Post reported a few days ago
that in July of 2014, Cynthia Whitlatch, a Seattle officer, arrested a then 69
year old because he was using a golf club as a cane.
Yes, a golf club.
You can watch the video in
the link found below, and see that Mr. William Wingate was just standing on a
corner of a four-way intersection minding his own business, when Whitlatch
approaches him telling him that he has a weapon. While the golf club could be
used as a weapon, so could a pencil, a pocket knife, a computer, the list goes
on. What this officer was thinking is beyond my imagination, but to simply stop
your patrol car next to a 69 year old man who is not doing anything and is
black creates many questions.
To go even further,
Whitlatch says that Wingate swung the golf club at her, using it as her main excuse
to arrest him. A video footage never lies, and Wingate never tried to hurt
anyone. Unfortunately he was in the wrong place, and at the wrong time. The
country’s racial wounds will always be there, but we can always try to make
them hurt a little less every day.
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