If you want to believe that racism is retreating into the past, this incident will remind you that we've only just started to leave that past behind.
Aaron Bowman, a Black man, was forced out of his car after a traffic stop in May 2019. He was already on the ground when a white policeman named Jacob Brown came by, got out of his cruiser, and pounded Bowman with a flashlight 18 times in 20 seconds. Bowman wound up with a broken jaw, three broken ribs, a broken wrist and a bloody gash on his head that required six staples.
"I kept thinking I was going to die that night," Bowman told the Associated Press.
Brown had been reported for 23 use-of-force incidents going back to 2015 -- about every two months for four years. Brown resigned this January.
Police stonewalled inquiries about the footage for more than two years, but now, Brown is under federal investigation along with Louisiana police as a whole, and he has been charged with battery and malfeasance in Bowman's beating -- as well as facing charges in two other violent arrests of Black drivers. In one case, he bragged in a troopers' group chat that "it warms my heart knowing we could educate that young man."
This scum-sucking dirtbag belongs in jail -- along with the people who let him get away with this behavior for four years. The kicker to this despicable incident was that it occurred only three weeks after another Black driver was killed by the side of a Louisiana road -- again after a traffic stop, again after a savage beating by police.
______
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/aaron-larry-bowman-louisiana-police-trooper-video-pummel-black-man-flashlight/
Illustration: "Scream for all your worth" by id-iom is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
No comments:
Post a Comment