It would be nice if police officers across America would just admit that a lot of them can’t wait for an excuse to whip their guns out, especially when detaining Black people.
Over the weekend, a Black family of four from Little Rock, Arkansas, was stopped by police in Frisco, Texas, after leaving a hotel on their way to a basketball tournament in Dallas. Before the occupants of the vehicle knew it, one of the officers had their gun pointed at them and was threatening to shoot, according to the Dallas Morning News.
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Apparently, the officers thought the family had stolen the car they were riding in because one of the officers had run the out-of-town license plate—for the wrong state.
The Frisco police officer ran the plate on the family’s Dodge Charger, which the department noted is a car that is frequently stolen. But, apparently, the officer, whose job it is to enter accurate information while running a plate, didn’t know their state abbreviations thoroughly enough and entered the plate as if it were from Arizona, not Arkansas. So, when no registration appeared on her screen, she and another officer immediately assumed the car was stolen, which was apparently the only excuse at least one of them needed to draw their weapon on the unsuspecting family during the incident that was caught on video.
In body cam footage shared by the Dallas Morning News, one officer points his gun at the Charger and commands the occupants to show their hands. He then orders the driver to step out, pull her shirt up, exit the vehicle, and walk backward toward the officers.
The woman says she’s from Arkansas and that her family was on their way to a basketball tournament. She gets out her driver’s license and concealed carry license and tells police she has a firearm locked in the car’s glove compartment.
“I’ve never been in trouble a day in my life,” she tells the officer, struggling to catch her breath. “This is scaring the hell out of me. I have bad anxiety.”
While questioning her the officer seemingly says;
“Sounds like you need to go have a conversation with Arizona.” The driver corrects her, saying Arkansas.
One can only wonder how long it took the officer to clean all the egg off of their face after condescendingly telling the woman she pulled over, “Sounds like you need to go have a conversation with Arizona” while being loud and wrong about what state she’s even from.
Meanwhile, the mother sees the other officer taking her handcuffed son to his patrol car.
“Please don’t let them do that to my baby,” the woman can be heard saying in video footage of the incident. “This is very traumatizing. Why is my baby in cuffs?”
It’s almost as if cops are as eager to place Black children in handcuffs as they are to pull their guns on them.
Anyway, according to the News, sixteen entire minutes of blue-on-Black terror passed before the officers realized their mistake.
“For real?” one officer asks. “AR is Arkansas, correct?”
“They were run out of Arizona,” another officer said, to which the officer who ran the plates responded, “That’s on me.”
The handcuffed child’s father said the situation “could have went all wrong for us,” adding that “they yell out, ‘Don’t move or we’ll shoot.’ We could have all gotten killed.” He can also be heard in the video telling officers they pulled a gun on his son “for no reason.”
So, the officers eventually let the family go and then later the department released its little pitiful, excuse-ridden apology.
“Due to recent burglaries and vehicle thefts in which Chargers are frequently stolen, the officer conducted a computer check of the vehicle’s Arkansas license plate,” Frisco PD said in a statement, according to Fox 4. “However, when entering the information, the plate was mistakenly entered out of Arizona. The error resulted in an incorrect registration return, leading the officer to believe that the vehicle was possibly stolen.”
“We made a mistake,” said Frisco Police Chief David Shilson. “Our department will not hide from its mistakes. Instead, we will learn from them. The officer involved quickly accepted responsibility for what happened, which speaks to integrity. I’ve spoken with the family. I empathize with them and completely understand why they’re upset. I apologized on behalf of our department and assured them that we will hold ourselves accountable and provide transparency through the process. This incident does not reflect the high standard of service that our officers provide on a daily basis to our residents, businesses and visitors.”
Notice that nowhere in either statement of apology was it acknowledged that maybe—just maybe—pulling out a deadly weapon shouldn’t be a cop’s first immediate response to a perceived nonviolent crime, which, in this case, turned out to be no crime at all.
