Because Daryl Turner was black.

Simple as that.

They were so incredibly rude to him. Took him into the office, called the cops, etc. This is the store where my folks spend a couple hundred dollars a week!

He paid for the shaving cream and left.

Then my folks got a letter from an asshole lawyer at Dominicks offering to settle out of court for $300.

I wrote a letter back informing Asshole that no court in the land would convict my senior citizen father for chasing his retarded son and then paying for the item in question anyway. I told him he should apologize.

Assholes. My folks were afraid they were going to have to pay it. It’s just intimidation, b/c most people are going to think that lawyers have a point when they send you a threatening dunning letter.

I had just finished a long hike in the woods with my dog, had put him in the back seat of the car and gotten in the driver’s seat when I was surrounded by three cop cars. In a matter of seconds they were out of their cars and pointing guns at my head. At my HEAD. As Woody Allen would say, my head contains my brain, which is one of my favorite organs.

They screamed at me to drop my weapon and put my hands up. I was holding a cell phone (which didn’t register with me immediately — I remember thinking ‘what weapon?’). I finally put two and two together and dropped the cell phone, at which point they told me to tell the person in the back seat to put his hands in the air or they would shoot. I was screaming back, “He’s a dog — he doesn’t have hands!” Somehow, it made sense at the time to yell that.

Long story short, when they finally got me out of the car (very difficult — they wanted me to open the door and get out slowly while still keeping my hands in the air. I honestly think my spleen took over at that point and said, “I’ll get the door handle.”) the story was sorted out. And what was the story?

A green Toyota Corolla had been stolen in the vicinity five minutes earlier. Problem is, I drove a green Toyota CAMRY. They didn’t even have the right model of car. Mine was just the first green Toyota in the area that they saw, and they drew their guns.

And I am a fairly small white woman. Can you imagine if I was a black man?

Seriously? Imagine how the “poor cop” feels? Seriously?

Yes, seriously. Most cops, even the ones on the highest power-trip, are not there to murder people in cold blood. And if they’ve put a “non-lethal” weapon in your hand that you end up killing someone with, there are very, very few people who would be able to live with having done that.

Jeff L.:

Bottom line, if the police are walking into a strange situation and they tell you to stop, stop. If you’re not listening to the police, you’re assuming the risk of your behavior.

Which is why a couple of hundred mentally ill people end up dead every year — because cops assume that if someone isn’t following instructions, they’re doing it deliberately.

Whatever happened to de-escalating a situation? What happened to talking to the guy until he calms down? Are the police in Charlotte so goddamned busy that they don’t have time to talk to an upset 17-year-old?

That’s the problem with “non-lethal” weapons — they make for lazy cops. Unless they thought the kid was going to kill someone with a frozen pizza, what was the point of going straight to a weapon?

By police. With taser.