Arrested for having the same first name…and the same skin color
I'm just waking up after a rotten day lost to anger yesterday, and one of the first stories I read is this of how Atlanta cops took two months from an innocent woman's life because she was ALSO a black woman named Teresa. Here, read this part, as it's my favorite:
"All she has is the same first name. The only descriptions that match are 'Teresa' and 'black female,'" Culpepper's attorney, Ashleigh Merchant told The Lookout. Culpepper, who is 47, didn't have the same address, birth date, height, or weight as the Teresa who was supposed to be arrested.
So not only are Atlanta's cops racist, but completely incompetent. I could ALMOST see this being a legitimate mix up if the woman shared the same last and first name. But all the cops had was "black Teresa." They did nothing to find out if they had the right person, nothing resembling police investigation. They dragged off the wrong person, who called them to report another crime. Way to go, Johnny Law.
You can't even pretend this isn't a case of blatant racism. Cops wouldn't grab another white Teresa based only on the first name, no matter what the crime was. But if the person is brown, they lose the benefit of the doubt for sharing their first name with criminals. That it happened in Atlanta is not surprising. That it happens with so little attention or notice, even with the locals, is troubling. It's like as soon as America elected a black president, racism was back on the table as a viable alternative to thinking critically again. How else do we explain these decisions to round up POC without anything resembling basic police work?
If the police are supposed to enforce the laws, then they ought to try following them sometimes. It's so much harder to see a cop's side of this when almost all the stories out about cops these days are usually highlighting what the control freaks are doing to lord their power over civilians. This isn't protecting and serving the public, it's harassing and imprisoning innocent people just so the cops can maintain a quota. And it's got to stop.
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