It is not that they do what they think of as dumb and dangerous things. It is that they are raised to feel in their bones that any demand or request of a black person by a white person or any person in authority is demeaning and is not to be tolerated. Consider Michelle Obama’s description of the short white woman asking her to reach a product on a high shelf for her. That was, for Michelle, an instance of unforgivable racism. When you have that attitude toward a cop who has reason to believe that you might just kill him, that attitude makes it almost impossible to protect your own life by co-operating.
That is an excellent point.
Excellent observation.
And they still don’t seem to understand that if you just cooperate with police, you will live. You might get to stay at the crossbar hotel for a while, but it’s probably better than a hole in the ground forever.
Virtually every one of the recent police shootings occurred for the same reason. Resisting arrest. Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, I can’t remember the names of those in the past couple of weeks. Every one of them was resisting arrest. Which the mainstream news conveniently omits from their reports.
I was pulled over on a misidentification in Austin years ago. I fit the description of a guy who robbed a hamburger joint an hour earlier, was walking down Guadalupe Street to go to a sit in gig carrying a guitar case. The officer got a bad description, thought I might have the shotgun used in the robbery hidden in the guitar case, so he pulled over, hand on his gun, and asked for an ID.
When he called it in, he also asked for the description again and found out it was wrong, and apologized for having to arrest me anyway, warrant for a parking ticket I forgot about. OK, I’m off to jail.
The cop was nice as he could be, once he realized the mistake, and actually apologized for having to arrest me, I told him don’t worry about it, he was just doing his job. We talked and joked around for 15 minutes while we waited for the city guys to show up, he was a county sheriff’s deputy, and the city cop was cool about it too, even asked me of the cuffs were too tight. No...
All I did was cooperate, and show them a little respect. Didn’t run, didn’t fight, didn’t cuss anybody over a faulty description...when he told me that I said something like oh crap, just what I needed...we both laughed...He already knew I was the wrong guy and a guitar was actually in the guitar case...
So it’s actually that simple. Don’t give the cops a hard time. Even if they do have to arrest you, they are usually decent guys and will treat you like a human being. Fight them and they will treat you like what you are...a low life thug.