attackfish

Oh it has absolutely never been a free society for black people, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. As for the militarization of the police and over-policing, I had a run in with the Albuquerque police that I thought was going to end in my death. Two patrol officers stopped me and a friend of mine under the pretext that we might be drunk (we weren't) and I might be underage and driving past the under-18 curfew (I wasn't, I was 20). They held us for over an hour, taunted us, refused to allow me to call my parents, insisted my license was fake, asked for my insurance and registration, and then when I reached for it, said I could be going for a gun and then yelled at me for being noncompliant for not giving them my insurance and registration, told us they would shoot us if I reached for my inhaler, while I had an asthma attack, unclipped their badges and hid them in their car, and were thoroughly sexually creepy with us. I'm pretty sure that if I weren't a white middle class woman, I would be dead. I know that a certain member of my immediate family who aside from being a recovering drug addict used to have a nasty habit of mouthing off to the cops, would be dead. In my extremely law abiding life have had multiple run ins with bullying and abusive cops starting when I was ten. And even as I wonder how much worse it would have gotten, I know it would have been worse if I weren't white.