Dan had his first experience with the captioned tonight on his way home from work. As he was driving home, he noticed a cop following closely behind him. He came to a couple of stop signs and made sure he made a full and complete stop. The cop then pulled up along side him, and then proceeded to put his lights on to pull Dan over. Dan knew why he was being pulled over, and was already fairly angry when the copy came back and said, "what brings you to this neighborhood?" To which Dan responded, "What, am I too white for this neighborhood?" OK, so that was probably not the right foot to start off on with a cop. Needless to say, it got ugly and Dan ended up having three tickets thrown at him with no explanation. One for not wearing a seatbelt (Dan NEVER goes anywhere without his seatbelt buckled), one for windshield obstruction (? we are still trying to figure that one out), and failing to use a turn signal when turning off of a street he was never on. He handed them to Dan and said "Good luck using the white boy excuse with those in court." When Dan asked him to come back and explain what the tickets were for, he said "you don't order me around!" Also, when he and his partner were writing the tickets in the car, they kept looking back at Dan and laughing. So, Dan has to appear in court in August for all three tickets.
This is so ridiculous!! We know several people who have been pulled over in our neighborhood because they are white people in a predominantly black area, so cops assume they are here to buy drugs. Unfortunately, they are harassing the very people who are here to reach out to this community. What makes me even more upset is that the tickets were totally FALSE. They totally LIED!!!!! Arrrgg....
Dan is trying to file some type of complaint tonight, but who knows if that will help or not. I'm willing to bet this won't be the last time he gets pulled over. I guess this is just a small taste of what injustice feels like!
P.S. I think Dan finally just updated his blog. :-)
P.P.S. We also just checked the blinkers and they are ALL working.
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2 comments:
This is so unbelievable and APPALLING. I just cannot believe that this happend to Dan. It is so maddening and frustrating. It's unfair, too that the police are making the assumption that white men are there for drug purposes. (is it buying or selling, or do they think either??) How rude were those police and also how terrible for them to issue tickets that are completely false. Patrick (who was once falsely arrested himself!!) is so mad, he wants to hire Dan a lawyer (his friend Scott who just graduated U of I law) for his August court date. Is there any way for him to get out of the tickets? Are there big fines? Oooh how frustrating. You guys are doing the right thing by being there and we continue to be so proud of you!!
Thanks for your support, Chris. I don't know what the fines will be or if there's any way to beat the tickets...it's the 2 cops' word against mine. I'm wondering if there's a law regarding cops having to explein why they are giving you tickets, though. While I don't excuse or explain away the action of this cop, I've definitely learned a probably expensive lesson about having better control over what I say/ how I say it...There was nothing legally wrong with my calling the cop out for profiling me, but I acknolwedge, as a believer, the way I said the things I said (i.e. sarcasm) was not a good reflection of Christ. That being said, I will be reporting this officer to the "office of professional standards" and sending a letter to the commander of his department...but, I don't have any witnesses, so I'm not counting on a lot. Tom, who came with to the Derek Webb concert has been stopped by cops 8 times this year. 3 other 20-something white guys I've known from work have been stopped and harassed in the past too, and I've always told myself that if it happened to me, I would speak up...should have thought that through a little more, I guess. I'm the first one I know of that is actually (literally) going to have to pay.
Dan
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