Video: PA Cop Harasses And Handcuffs Black Teen After Commenting On Him Wearing A Jacket On A ‘Warm Day’
It was just last month that I wrote in a report that, often, “racial profiling is just a cop deciding to personally slide the scale of what constitutes probable cause when encountering a Black person they just want to stop and search because they are there.” I wrote that in response to a story about a Michigan cop who handcuffed and detained a Black teen because, as the cop stated, the teen “looked guilty” because he appeared to be “nervous” and because he grabbed his crotch area, which, in the cop’s view, meant he was “acting like someone who commits crimes.”
Well, now, another picture-perfect example has gone viral, exposing another white cop who thinks any old excuse will do when they have spotted a Black person, whom they’re looking to harass and place in handcuffs while they embark on a fishing expedition, hoping to find a criminal offense to justify the stop.
In the video clip, which was taken in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, according to Fox 56, the Black teen is seen recording himself as he walks down a road when a police officer, who is coming up behind him, says, “It’s a warm day to be wearing that jacket.” The teen continues to walk without saying a word, at which time the officer says, “You’re going to get hit by a car here,” to which the teen responds by, well, continuing not to respond, which clearly got under the cop’s thin, blue skin.
“I’m asking you to stop,” the officer says before repeating those words as he grabs the teen by the shoulder.
“I’m doing a traffic stop on you. You walked across the road in front of a car,” the cop says, suddenly indicating that he actually has an excuse to be following the teen around for reasons other than the jacket he was wearing on a “warm day.”
Later, the teen is shown sitting handcuffed in the back of a patrol vehicle.
The teen hasn’t been publicly identified, but Fox 56 spoke with a man claiming to be his father, Jessie Lopez, who described the altercation as “a lesson for both of us.”
“I need to make sure he knows how to interact with police, even when he feels he’s done nothing wrong,” he said. “Things can escalate fast. He ended up handcuffed and detained because he didn’t want to stop and answer their questions.”
Lopez also mentioned that his son “suffers from eczema, and direct sunlight aggravates his skin condition.”
“Although it was warm outside, there was a legitimate medical reason for him wearing his hood,” he said.
The thing is, it really doesn’t matter why the teen was wearing a jacket in the heat. It’s no one’s business besides the teen’s.
Setting aside the fact that anyone who has been outside during the summertime in the past decade or so knows how common it is for young people, these days, to wear hoodies and light jackets when it’s blazing hot outside. We might poke a little fun at them for it, but we don’t leap to the assumption that there’s anything suspicious about them, that they might be engaged in criminal behavior, or that wearing a jacket when it’s hot outside constitutes enough probable cause for a cop to place handcuffs on a minor.
Now, a “back the blue” bootlicker will watch this video and reflexively ask, “Well, why didn’t he just stop when the officer said stop?” But for Black people who have plenty of lived experience with the effects of driving while Black, walking while Black, or just existing where white people don’t think we belong, all we needed to see was the expression on the young man’s face. We know that look. Hell, we are that look.
The teen’s facial expression displayed the look of “we tired.” That look was the reflection of 400 years of Black people trying desperately to mind our own business while the white world around us considers our very existence to be a criminal act. We can’t do anything without looking suspicious to self-appointed Caucasian overseers who feel entitled to our submission.
Let’s be real: that cop didn’t feel the need to handcuff and detain that Black teen because he “walked across the road in front of a car.” If that was the case, how come the officer began his pursuit by asking about the teen’s attire, rather than the manner in which he was crossing the road? No, that cop cuffed that Black kid because he didn’t like being ignored while he was attempting to abuse his authority.
Anyway, according to Fox 56, Williamsport police said in a statement that the officer who conducted the stop is assigned to the Lycoming County District Attorney’s Office Narcotics Enforcement Unit and is not a member of the Williamsport Bureau of Police.
“We are aware of a cell phone video circulating on social media involving a pedestrian stop,” the department said. “We want to clarify that the stop was not conducted by the Williamsport Bureau of Police, and we do not have any information regarding the circumstances surrounding the incident.”
So, basically, even other cops saw this cop’s behavior and essentially said, “He doesn’t even go here!”
As the teen’s father indicated, the onus always seems to be on us to know how to deal with police, because “things can escalate fast,” but these incidents never result in a lesson for police, who are supposedly trained to de-escalate, or those who are dedicated to defending them, no matter the circumstances.
The officer targeted a youth who wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary and didn’t want to be bothered. They pretend to wonder why we’re so wary of them, while intentionally giving us every reason to be wary.
And we are tired.
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