An Alabama police officer got shut down when he tried to detain an African American man for doing nothing other than jogging.
The man, Corey Dickerson, recorded the interaction, where he was essentially being harassed because of his ethnicity.
Dickerson, was out of breath and resting when a police cruiser pulled up. The officer asked where he was going, even though the officer had no reason to suspect him of having committed any crime, according to The Free Thought Project.
“You look like you been running,” the police officer said. “Where you been running from?”
Dickerson admitted that he was running. “Just around,” and “nowhere in particular.”
The officer asks if Dickerson had identification on him. He acknowledged that he did, but Dickerson knew his rights.
“Well, looks like I’m about to get harassed,” he told the officer.
He then notified the officer that he was live streaming the encounter, so that even if the officer confiscates his phone, the video would be uploaded to the cloud. He then said that he would stay in front of the police cruiser, to make sure whatever the officer tried to do would be caught on the dashcam.
“Look, my camera does the same thing, and you can tell them why I stopped you,” the cop said. “It is 12:30 in the morning, I’ve had a lot of burglaries and thefts. You can get this on camera, so now I’m just asking you for your ID.”
The Raw Story notes that Alabama is a “stop and identify” state. That means that the police may “stop any person abroad in a public place whom he reasonably suspects is committing, has committed or is about to commit a felony or other public offense and may demand of him his name, address and an explanation of his actions.”
Dickerson acknowledged the law, but said that it required him to be suspected of committing a crime – thus, he said he needed to be told what crime he was being suspected of having committed.
“I’m not a lawyer, don’t even pretend to be one, but I know that in order to detain me, you’ve got to have some type of reasonable suspicion that I’ve committed some type of crime,” Dickerson said, as a second officer arrived. “I’m minding my own business out here, I’m literally jogging — exercising.”
The second officer suggested that seeing him running was probable cause of commission of a crime. But Dickerson had a retort for that too – the officer never actually saw him running when he stopped him.
“He literally seen me just standing right here,” Dickerson explained. “I was literally bent over right here, catching my breath.”
“I don’t mean to interrupt you, but I don’t trust police just because I got my hair pulled out, I was choked, tased, maced, beaten bloody — you hear me? beaten bloody — by four cops while I was in handcuffs,” Dickerson explained. “One bad apples spoils the whole bunch for me.”
Watch the video below, uploaded by The Free Thought Project…
Source: http://truthfight.com/alabama-cop-gets-shut-tried-stop-man-jogging-black/