{"id":14135,"date":"2009-03-12T08:49:58","date_gmt":"2009-03-12T15:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=14135"},"modified":"2009-03-12T10:11:18","modified_gmt":"2009-03-12T17:11:18","slug":"driving-while-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/03\/12\/driving-while-black.html","title":{"rendered":"Driving While Black"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, this is a pretty horrific story<\/a> from the LA Times about Tenaha, Texas, that won’t surprise folks who know this sort of thing goes on, but hopefully will shock at least a few readers.<\/p>\n

\n

You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana state line if you’re African American, but you might not be able to drive out of it — at least not with your car, your cash, your jewelry or other valuables.<\/p>\n

That’s because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime. Instead they offer out-of-towners a grim choice: Sign over your belongings to the town, or face felony charges of money laundering or other serious crimes.<\/p>\n

More than 140 people reluctantly accepted that deal from June 2006 to June 2008, according to court records. Among them were a black grandmother from Akron, Ohio, who surrendered $4,000 in cash after Tenaha police pulled her over, and an interracial couple from Houston, who gave up more than $6,000 after police threatened to seize their children and put them into foster care, the court documents show. Neither the grandmother nor the couple were charged with or convicted of any crime.<\/p>\n

[…] Guillory said the court records showed, the police seized cash, jewelry, cellphones and sometimes even automobiles from motorists but never found any contraband or charged them with any crime. Of those, Guillory said he managed to contact 40 of the motorists directly — and discovered that all but one of them were black.<\/p>\n

“The whole thing is disproportionately targeted toward minorities, particularly African Americans,” Guillory said. “Every one of these people is pulled over and told they did something, like, ‘You drove too close to the white line.’ That’s not in the penal code, but it sounds plausible. None of these people have been charged with a crime; none were engaged in anything that looked criminal. The sole factor is that they had something that looked valuable.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yup. Shaking down the downtrodden when they pass through town is a long law enforcement tradition, lent legal patina through state seizure laws. That it’s still going on so blatantly and with such a racial slant is outrageous. And this particular defense of the practice<\/a> by the Mayor of Tenaha is a classic.<\/p>\n

\n

Tenaha Mayor George Bowers, 80, defended the seizures, saying they allowed a cash-poor city the means to add a second police car in a two-policeman town and help pay for a new police station.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always helpful to have any kind of income to expand your police force,\u201d Bowers said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Bowers has been mayor there for 54 years. Sounds like a profitable job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, this is a pretty horrific story from the LA Times about Tenaha, Texas, that won’t surprise folks who know this sort of thing goes on, but hopefully will shock at least a few readers. You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana state line if you’re African American, but … Continue reading “Driving While Black”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-law","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":51831,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/24\/if-you-bury-them-they-will-come.html","url_meta":{"origin":14135,"position":0},"title":"If you bury them, they will come","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 24-Jul-15 1:54am","format":false,"excerpt":"A Texas town is fearful that if they allow a Muslim cemetery to be crated ... more Muslims might come. It's as if Death breeds more of those strange and terrifying creatures...'\"The concern for us is the radical element of Islam,\" David J. Meeks, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, told\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":25562,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/18\/black-gold-texas-tea.html","url_meta":{"origin":14135,"position":1},"title":"Black Gold … Texas Tea","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 18-Jan-12 3:10pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A lot of folks supporting the Keystone XL pipeline don't realize that it has nothing to do with providing the US more oil. As the article notes, there is plenty of existing pipeline capacity to the US from Canada. But all those pipelines end at refineries in the Midwest; the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":42442,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/08\/political-platform-zaniness.html","url_meta":{"origin":14135,"position":2},"title":"Political Platform Zaniness","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 8-Jun-14 2:36pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Courtesy of the Texas GOP.Granted, political platforms tend to be, any more, fairly fringe ivory tower ideals that nobody thinks will happen (or even particular want to have happen). \u00a0But this bunch of proposals can essentially be summed up as \"we need to use our God-given guns to drive off\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4859,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/12\/17\/sell_a_vibrator.html","url_meta":{"origin":14135,"position":3},"title":"Sell a vibrator — go to prison","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 17-Dec-03 7:08am","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, in Texas at least. Joanne Webb, a former fifth-grade teacher and mother of three, was in a county court in Cleburne, Texas, on Monday to answer obscenity charges for...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":41494,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/03\/22\/clean-coal.html","url_meta":{"origin":14135,"position":4},"title":""Clean" Coal","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 22-Mar-14 9:18pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Um ... no, it's not. And, ironically, as more has been done to scrub contaminants out of the air, it's mean those contaminants instead end up in the solid ash waste left behind. Waste which the utilities want to keep unregulated because it would cost money to do something about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132722,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/01\/because-we-can-always-use-acts-of-kindness.html","url_meta":{"origin":14135,"position":5},"title":"Because we can always use acts of kindness","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 1-Feb-17 3:06pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A Jewish synagogue in a small Texas town has given a key to the local Muslim community, to use their building after their mosque burned down under mysterious circumstances.Kindness matters. Jews Hand Muslims Synagogue Keys When a Texas Mosque Burns Down Temple B\u2019Nai Israel in Victoria, Texas offered its key\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}