Hi, it's me,field, your friendly "racism chaser", and I have another story for you:
Terrence Jones is a retired Philadelphia police officer. He was on the force for 11 years until he got a job related injury and decided to settle down in a beautiful South Jersey McMansion with his family. Life was good for Terrence Jones until the night of February 4, 2007. That's the night he met Patrolman Michael Schaeffer. The Patrolman pulled Jones over and asked him why he was exiting an industrial park. He then proceeded to ask Mr. Jones if he had been drinking and if he would allow a vehicle search. Jones told the Patrolman that he never drinks and refused to allow the search of his Lincoln Navigator. (Come on field, he was asking to be stopped. Why don't you black people drive simple cars?) The Patrolman, undaunted, ordered Jones out of his vehicle, frisked him, and then leaned into the vehicle to look around. To top it off, he did a sobriety test after not smelling liquor on Jone's breath and justified it by telling someone on his police radio that Mr. Jones is "just shady".
Now if you think all of that was outrageous; wait, it gets better: Mr. Jones had the nerve to be outraged at the treatment he received at the hands of one of South Jersey's finest, so he did what any angry citizen would do: he wrote a letter to the Police Chief of the township where he was harassed for DWB. What do you think happened? Well, the police chief claimed that he never got the letter, and finally, after Mr. Jones called him, he decided that he he would pick up a copy of the letter from Mr. Jone's home. Of course he never questioned or disciplined the officer involved, and he passed the complaint on to a county investigator.
Fast forward to July of the same year, and to his horror, Mr. Jones found himself looking at 18 months in jail after a grand jury indicted him for filing a false police report. Yep, a false police report! Do you believe that shit? Of course you do, it's why you are reading this blog.
Anyway, fortunately for Mr. Jones, his story had a happy ending. Happy being a relative term, of course.
"Visibly angered, Superior Court Judge M. Christine Allen Jackson had called the case 'chilling' when she found him not guilty. It was over; and Jones sobbed in relief."
"A lot of people came up to me afterward and said they,too, had been stopped for driving while black..they felt nothing would be done if they complained and they didn't want to become a target."
Well, they might as well complain, because they are targets. Not complaining and letting bullshit like this slide will only make a bad situation worse. DWB is bad enough as it is. If we don't call enough attention to these racist cowboys they will think that they can get away with the things they did to folks like Ryan Moats in Dallas (who, by the way, accepted the ignorant officer's apology, just like I told you he would) and Terrence Jones in South Jersey.
Terrence Jones and Ryan Moats were lucky, there were police cameras to video tape what happened to them as they drove while black. Quite a few folks have not been so lucky.
"Jones believed the tape saved him. 'It would have been my word against the police officers', he said. 'I might have been doing 18 months in jail."
Or worse Mr. Jones, you might have been dead.
