Filed under: News, Race and Civil Rights
Jonathan Zimmerman (pictured), a 26-year-old New Yorker, is suing the New York Police Department (NYPD), after he had to have a prong from a Taser surgically removed from his back.
Zimmerman was sitting in his car with a friend outside her Bedford-Stuyvesant home, and a uniformed officer wrote him a ticket for allegedly being double-parked.
When Zimmerman began to argue with the officer for writing the ticket, he was ordered out of the car. Zimmerman, a security guard, refused to comply. This is when an officer allegedly grabbed the keys from his ignition and maced him in the face.
Zimmerman was also tasered at the same time.
A spokesman for the NYPD said that officers ordered Zimmerman to move his car, and he talked back instead. Zimmerman's response was that black men are stopped for no reason on a regular basis:
"I see stuff like this a lot," he said, "and I've never seen anybody go through this for a parking ticket."
After reading the details of his case, I am in full support of Mr. Zimmerman's lawsuit against the NYPD.
I find it ironic that African-American men are regularly questioned and stopped by police officers, who then may punish them for talking back or refusing to comply with unjust instructions.
If Zimmerman was indeed double-parked, the officer could have written him the ticket and left the scene. There was no need for him to force Zimmerman out of the car just because he had something to say.
As the son of a high-ranking police official, I've seen both sides of the police brutality argument: I've seen officers unfairly accused of racism when they had to defend their lives by using force against a defendant who happened to be black. I've also seen cases in which power-hungry officers have punished otherwise law-abiding citizens for speaking out or exercising their legal rights.
We can't deny the role that racial profiling plays in the disproportionate likelihood of black men being arrested and incarcerated.
If the police were to search college campuses the way they search black neighborhoods, a good 20 percent of white college students would go to jail for drug possession, underage drinking and other atrocious things that happen on campuses all across the country.
This also plays a role in the growth of black female incarceration in recent years. Although black and white women are equally likely to commit crimes, black women are eight times more likely to go to prison than white women.
The Zimmerman case is a reminder of what happens to black men and women all across America. If you are more likely to be stopped and searched, then you also have a greater likelihood of experience unfortunate confrontations with police. The seemingly endless power of the state to violate individual freedoms and disrespect American citizens should be of concern to us all, for there should be nothing wrong with talking back to a police officer.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here. To follow Dr. Boyce on Facebook, please click here.