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Valuable lessons were learned, but not the ones that the mother thought would be learned.
* She learned that millions of Black people haven't been "making it all up" about police mistreatment
* She learned why US Black folk almost never call the police, for any reason
* Her son learned that his own mom is not safe. Her lack of understanding of US racism makes her dangerous
* She's probably going to learn that this does not meet the definition of police misconduct
@mekkaokereke I’d love your (and others!) take on a related situation I had recently. Driving home with the family, entering a roundabout in our neighborhood and a Tesla from the oncoming side missed it, jumped the whole thing, hit a cement light pole and jumped itself 15 feet in the air. Visible airbag deployment, massive damage.
@mekkaokereke We pull off, tell my son to call 911 and report it in. A few minutes later, black dude stops. Immediately starts telling me I should ask the driver (young white woman) if she wanted me to call and I was “harassing her by making an unwanted call”. She was dazed, not making a ton of sense. I ask her and she says “it’s ok, yeah” but not assertively (she was absolutely showing signs of a concussion or impairment).
What’s your read? Was I wrong? If not, advice on deescalating?
These are the tough questions that I wish we didn't have to struggle with as a country. And yes, that is a legitimately tough question. There's no clear answer.
The calculus we have to do is: Is the probability of a police officer making this situation better, greater than the probability of a police officer making it worse?
Often after an accident, people are concussed,
Which means they will be slow to follow commands. With the wrong US cop, this can be fatal.
@mekkaokereke @jshirley
I have an additional question from the perspective of a non American: why would the police show up as a result of an emergency call for a traffic accident? Shouldn't it be an ambulance that shows up rather than a police car? Or am I misunderstanding how emergency services work in the US?
@brunogirin @mekkaokereke @jshirley
Pretty sure that in the UK if you dial 999, ask for an ambulance (rather than police or fire service) then say it's for a road traffic accident, the police are always called out as well. They may need to clear the road and make it safe for other users, quite apart from the possibility of criminal charges.
The big difference is that here the police don't routinely carry guns.
@regordane @brunogirin @mekkaokereke @jshirley Agreed. The police are definitely coming for a road collision, because they're going to breathalyse all the drivers of vehicles involved.
@beecycling @regordane @brunogirin @mekkaokereke @jshirley
The Police also get notified by the Ambulance Control for any incident where its suspected people have taken drugs. In the case of an RTC, it will likely be specialist Roads Policing Unit officers who attend the collision scene - some of them are fireams trained and may have guns in the vehicle, but do not wave them around like in USA (unless there is an an actual threat from weapons)