Let’s talk about a little something I like to call “cop logic.”
Here’s the scenario: A cop randomly and arbitrarily confronts a group of Black people who are committing the egregious crime of minding their own business. The Black people, baffled by how doing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary attracted police attention, behave as if they are distrustful of the officer so they question them about why they were stopped instead of immediately handing over their ID. The officer then tells the group of Black people that they’re behaving suspiciously by being suspicious of the officer who, before any interaction was had, already found said group of Black people to be suspicious for no discernable reason.
That’s the logical fallacy of a cop’s favorite statement: “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”
Well, there are two California police officers who, right about now, are probably wishing they followed actual logic instead of cop logic, because if they had, they might not be on the hook for monetary damages to be paid to the Black family they stopped and detained outside of a Starbucks because they found the family members suspicious because they were *checks notes* sitting in their car.
But since these officers followed cop logic meant to justify blatant racial profiling, a Black mother and her two daughters were awarded more than $8 million by a California jury.
From CBS News:
The incident happened in September 2019 when Nevada mother Aasylei Loggervale was driving her two daughters to California for college. The trio stopped at a Starbucks in Castro Valley, California, to rest and were approached by Alameda County sheriff’s deputies, according to court documents. Two deputies told the women they were searching for suspects in a recent rash of car thefts and asked for their identification, a lawsuit filed by the Loggervales against Alameda County alleged.
Loggervale refused to show her ID and…
Read the full article here
