This Plano Texas black man, Rodney Reese, was walking home from work at Walmart. Cops stopped him and arrested him for no real cause. Why?
Walking while black
Doesn’t everyone have the right to walk home without having to account for their existence? Sometimes a private citizen just wants to be left alone.
People reported the following.
A Black Texas teen who spent a night in jail after his arrest for walking in the street about 11 p.m. in short sleeves with snow and ice on the ground won’t be charged, says the chief of the Plano police department.
Rodney Reese, 18, alleges he was a victim of racial profiling as he made his way home after a work shift at Walmart.
“It’s ’cause I’m Black, I fit a description. It hurts, man,” he told KDFW-TV. “I don’t even think the call would’ve happened [if I wasn’t Black]. Honestly, I really don’t.”
In a Facebook post, Plano police on Friday defended its officers’ actions in the Feb. 16 incident, saying that arresting officers were responding to a “welfare concern call where a caller stated that a Black male subject wearing a short-sleeve shirt and shorts was walking down Hedgcoxe Road and was stumbling. Responding officers located the subject, and although he was wearing a short-sleeve shirt, he did have long pants.”
We have seen too many welfare checks by the police evolve into the arrest or death of POCs.