On September 4 at a South Carolina gas station, a white highway patrol officer shot a black unarmed man at a routine traffic stop after asking him for his license. The incident happened so quickly and the shooting so without provocation, that the victim, Levar Jones, was dumbfounded as shown in this exchange:
“Can I see your license please?” [highway patrol officer Sean] Groubert asked.
But something quickly changed. As Jones turned around and reached into his vehicle, Groubert could be heard shouting, “Get out of the car! Get out of the car!”
The officer then fired multiple times.
Jones stumbled away from his vehicle with his hands in the air and then fell to the ground. As Groubert radioed for medical help, the two men could be heard talking.
“I just grabbed my license. You said get my license!” Jones said. “What did I do, sir? I don’t know what happened. … Why did you shoot me?”
“Well, you dove headfirst back into your car,” Groubert said.
While this incident shows how important dash cams are (Groubert has been fired and is facing aggravated assault charges with a possible 20 year jail sentence), it also speaks truth to every fear that a black person has when he or she is stopped by the police. Being black is not a crime.
Team Blackness also discussed Eric Holder stepping down, the NAACP report on racial profiling, and a Texas man accused of buying school board votes with cocaine.
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