“Don’t bleeping come to Philadelphia!” either Nace or his partner shouts at the “suspect.” “Stay in Jersey!”
“We don’t want you here anyway,” the other cop says. “All you do is weaken the bleeping country.”
Determined not to take such abuse without putting up a fight, the “suspect” replies, “Yeah? I weaken the country? How do I weaken the country, by working?”
“No, freeloading,” the cop answers.
So there we have it: an illegal Terry stop. Rude, abusive cops. And racism.
Freeloading? It seemed way too easy for this white cop to make that conclusion. Apparently, he’s either not familiar with, or not comfortable with, the concept of black folks that are actually employed.
He seems much more enamored of the concept of all black folks as welfare “freeloaders.”
A 2010 report of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that 64 percent of black folks participate in the labor force. That figure is 66 percent for whites, 67 percent for Asians and 68 percent for Latinos.
So black folks, if those stats are valid, don’t “freeload” any more than white folks do.
The percentages of blacks and whites on welfare are nearly equal. The figure is 38.8 percent for whites and 39.8 percent for blacks.
But 38.8 percent of a really large number is going to be a lot more than 39.8 percent of a smaller number. And there are still a lot more white folks in this country than black folks.
So it’s probably just as likely that the two white cops that made this ridiculous stop have relatives who are on welfare than it is that the two men they stopped have relatives who are on welfare.
Any Philadelphian still wondering why the city’s cops get gunned down in the street – as Abu Jamal was convicted of doing over 30 years ago – had better watch that You Tube video.
The ‘Terry Stop’: Stop and Frisk Comes to Philadelphia was originally published on blackamericaweb.com
