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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSo typical down here...profile stop
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/watch-aramis-ayala-ask-two-cops-why-they-stopped-her-wvideo/2330148Aramis Ayala, Florida's first African-American elected state attorney, has been no stranger to racially charged insults, especially after she declared in March that she's not pursuing the death penalty for violent felony cases. For instance, in April, she received a noose in the mail.
But now footage has emerged where two white police officers are having a tough time explaining why they pulled over Ayala, the Orlando-area prosecutor on June 19 at about 8:15 p.m.
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They do this in the South all the time. I was working as a teacher, and went to a school basketball game. There was a family emergency, and I had to drive one of the players home (he was black). I got pulled over near the school and the officer literally asked me why there was a black kid in my car!
I explained I was a teacher and showed him my school ID, and I was taking the student home. He said I didn't do anything wrong so I was free to go.
That was years ago, but it hasn't changed much. They pulled over Ayala because she was black.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)and the cop backtracked double quick when he realized she was in a position of authority *AND* knew the law so she couldn't be bullshitted
sheshe2
(83,953 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Prosecutor removed from death penalty case takes Florida governor to court
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/28/us/aramis-ayala-florida-death-penalty-prosecutor/index.html
Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)I am guessing it's an official vehicle and because of that the tags are not coming back when run. I don't know now how Florida does that. In NC it would just return as state owned.
But, a tag when run not returning valid info is enough reasonable suspicion for a stop. And running tags as you drive around is completely legitimate as well.
I'm sure she's well aware of the fact that it's perfectly legitimate. But it gets her name out in the news cycle....
That reminds me of something I haven't thought of in years- NC has special codes on tags so you knew it was a Judge or prosecutor that were not obvious unless you knew- a judges tag might read something like J-9-20 and that meant a judge in the ninth circuit. An X on one meant retired. There was a whole code out there on what looked like regular passenger tags.
exboyfil
(17,865 posts)a more expensive car?
It would be good to do a study of tags run versus the race of the individual.
Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)But it's a huge, huge leap to assume that's what happened here and accuse those officers of being racist and abusing their authority without any evidence.
In fact, it would be downright irresponsible to accuse them of such based just on what we see here.
Seeing how dark that tiny was I don't know if they could even see who was in it.
I never had an MDT as my department couldn't afford them when I was a patrol deputy, and by ten time it became cheaper because you could use a regular laptop and cellular data I was doing the domestic violence task force and wasn't a priority for one. But our deputies that did ran tags constantly since they could do them without keeping dispatchers swamped with work. The end result was a big increase in the rate of recovery of stolen vehicles and a much better rate of catching people driving on a suspended license who were usually prior DUI's.
It was pretty common practice if you were not on an active call to run a tag you ended up behind at a traffic light, or run tags outside known hotspots for crime, or run the tags outside a bar and see if anyone was a prior suspension for DUI and keep an eye on that car because string chance they would be driving drunk leaving there again.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)especially in light of how many of us have ended up DEAD in routine, minor traffic stops...
Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)How is a blanket assumption that all cops are racist any different than the same logic a racist uses if they say a black man got caught stealing from them so all black men and criminals?
Don't use the kind of flawed and bignited against others that you are in the same breath accusing them of...
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)No more, nor no less flawed than jumping to the conclusion this stop was valid, ethical and without malice; that too, being a blanket assumption "you are in the same breath accusing others of..."
panader0
(25,816 posts)and reeks of police abuse. Sure, there are some "bad hombres" out there,
but to just run tags at random is not right. Police state BS.
Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)And not only that, they are issued by the state for purposes of identifying who has a valid registration to be driving on the public roads. You not only have no legal expectations of privacy in that regard you are literally putting a sign on you car that has as its whole purpose to make the police checking on your vehicle easy.
They were intended, for all practical purposes, to be checked on to ensure that motorist has paid their proper taxes and fees to use the public highways and roads. And that they are eligible to use them. The whole reason they are required if so the police can easily check that status. Otherwise you wouldn't have to have tags you would just carry a paper registration card in your cars. The whole point of a tag large enough to be seen from a distance is to make it easy to check.
Agschmid
(28,749 posts)It's interesting for sure.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)It's still DWB, because I fucking promise you no professional-looking white person in an expensive car gets stopped in that situation no matter what the tag reader says. And I also promise you the cop was going to have a completely different tone and demeanor until he heard "state's attorney" and damn near shit his pants, which makes you wonder how this stop would have gone down if it wasn't a state's attorney who didn't know her legal rights, doesn't it? I love the folks who can't ever bring themselves to admit that black folks ever get stopped for highly dubious or at best extremely minor justifications...
So why did both cops need to get out, since it's just a simple case of a tag not reading?
If everything is legit, why did the cop invent that bullshit window tint excuse on the fly?
Why wasn't the cop more calm and collected in defending his actions when asked to explain them?
Response to Blue_Tires (Reply #7)
Post removed
Agschmid
(28,749 posts)Take a step back, and reconsider your post.
It's out of line IMO.
HAB911
(8,922 posts)Sancho
(9,070 posts)that's similar to my observation.
I know that some FL police now have some kind of auto-tag-reader that scans tags. My wife was pulled once because an officer got a random hit on the reader that indicated her insurance was expired, which turned out to be a mistake. It was a hassle to take proof of insurance to the DMV, but they fixed it. OTOH, if it had been a black driver, would the officer have taken the tags, arrested the driver, or some other escalation?
The question to me isn't the technology. Do police canvas FAMU more than UCF in Orlando? Do they pull over minority drivers in high end cars more often? If it was not an attorney, would they have given her a ticket for some made up violation?
I suspect that some cops just do their job, but way too many are definitely profiling minorities. In this case, I hope Arimis makes a public records request for her tag records...and if that tag hit was good information...then that officer was lying.
HAB911
(8,922 posts)I live here.
I thought she might be driving a state registered vehicle but it doesn't seem so. Doesn't a state attorney get a car?! Deputies get cars.
Orrex
(63,233 posts)He and my sister have always lived in a liberal-ish college town, but recently he told her that he'd be driving out of state for a band gig.
She asked how he'd respond if he were stopped by cops in those other states, and he basically replied "the same as I do here."
He apparently gets pulled over all the time for driving while brown, even in a nominally left-leaning community.
I absolutely believe that Ayala is routinely harassed both for her skin and for her politics, and I have no doubt that your story is true.
We have a very long way to go.
When the country elected Barack Obama as our first black President I had the fleeting thought that we finally got there. Only to be dismayed when all the racist assholes started crawling out of the wood work.
Yes we have a very long way to go, sad but true