Bad Cop... NO DONUT!!

There was a time that I wondered if such a thing as racial profiling by the police was an actuality. As a White man, I had never witnessed it or been exposed to it, so I was always an outside observer. I no longer doubt it. In fact, I have seen it for myself.

I witnessed an automobile accident this afternoon. I was standing still in my vehicle at a red light while on my way home from work. On the Southbound side of the road on which I was travelling (I was travelling North), a man in a Ford F-250 plowed into the rear end of a late model Nissan Altima carrying an African American woman and her 4 children ranging, from what I could tell, in ages from 7-15 years. The Nissan was thrust into the Oldsmobile Bravada (an SUV) that was a little bit over a car length in front of it. It bounced off of the Oldsmobile, which was pushed all the way across the intersection, and slammed into the side of the Toyota pick-up truck that was in the lane to the Nissan’s right. The Ford F250 did not even leave skid marks, indicating that the driver made no attempt to stop. From my point of view, I would guess that the man driving the F250 was traveling at approximately 45-50 miles per hour.

As a person who chooses to take an interest in the care of his fellow human beings, I dialed 911 on my cell phone and made a u-turn to see if I could be of assistance. Fortunately, there was a man on a motorcycle who was travelling toward the scene who was a certified EMT and he was able to help in a more substantial way than I could have. One of the children, who appeared to be around 12, in the car that was hit initially had smashed her face into the back of the seat in front of her and was bleeding rather profusely. She was also apparently in shock, as she did not appear to recognize her surroundings and only knew that she was in pain.

Sadly, the man driving the F250 had his daughter in the truck with him. She was a cute little girl of about 4 years. She had a massive bump (or goose egg, as my mother likes to say) on her forehead, which leads me to believe that she was either not in a car seat or not wearing a seat belt. Either scenario is unacceptable to me. If an adult wishes to ride in a vehicle with no seat belt, that is one thing. However, no responsible adult should EVER travel with a child not strapped into some approved safety device. As a result of this man’s irresponsibility, 2 children had to ride in an ambulance to the closest emergency facility. Fortunately, no one else was injured in the accident.

I suppose that you are wondering where my first statement in this posting comes in. Well, here it is. Of the four vehicles involved in this accident, only one of them contained any people who were other than white. This would be the Nissan that was struck first and the Nissan that carried the girl with the smashed and bleeding face. When the first police officer arrived, the first person he asked for a drivers’ license and proof of insurance from was the DRIVER OF THE NISSAN! He actually singled out this poor African American mother who was worried sick about the condition of her child and asked HER for her drivers’ license! In fact, during the 45 minutes that I stood there in the heat, not one police officer EVER approached the driver of the F250. To make matters worse, this poor woman had just finished explaining to the officer that she didn’t want to go with him because she had just lost her husband (her injured daughter’s father) 6 months previously to the war in Iraq and that she would prefer to stay with her child. This police officer just ignored her pleas and demanded her information while her daughter was being strapped to a stretcher, her neck braced and loaded into an ambulance. The officer wouldn’t even allow her to enter the back of the ambulance until he had finished writing. Honestly, it made me nauseous.

For some reason, I had thought that the police were supposed to be there to take care of a person in their time of need and in their time of emergency. I thought that they were supposed to determine what had happened in an accident and question the culprit first. I guess I was mistaken. Or, at least in the case of African Americans who are the victims of accidents I was.