06 Dec 2015
A clearly confused and racist Georgia cop was caught on dashcam telling a driver during a traffic stop, “I don’t care about your people,” and then threatening him.
On November, 16, officer Maurice Lawson of the Cobb County police department pulled over 33-year-old middle school teacher, Brian Baker for allegedly speeding.
During the stop, three officers would surround Baker’s car to issue him a citation.
After Baker received the citation, he merely asked officer Lawson if he could leave, to which Lawson replied, “Leave. Go away. Go to Fulton County. I don’t care about your people, man, go.”
When Baker questioned the officer’s remarks, Lawson threatened him by saying, “Do you want to step out of the car and talk to me?”
“Why do you need me to step out of the car?” Baker asks.
“Go back to Fulton County, sir.”
Baker then drove off, at which point Lawson vented to his fellow officers about how people who don’t immediately prostrate themselves before his almighty badge, anger him. “I lose my cool, man, every time. Why do I got to deal with (stuff) like that? This is the f**king America we live in, ain’t it?”
Lawson’s admitted inability to keep his cool should, without a doubt, be grounds for losing a job in which he carries the state’s authority to use violence against others, and a gun to enact said violence. However, when he actually loses his cool on video by making blatantly bigoted remarks and subsequent threats, there should be no question as to whether or not he should keep his badge.
But, as in most cases, Lawson was not fired, nor was he even suspended. He was merely transferred to another precinct, “Pending an Investigation.”
This transfer came in spite of the fact that the department acknowledged Lawson’s behavior was out of line and issued an apology to Baker.
The officer’s conduct “does not meet our high standards, has brought discredit to the department… and is not now nor will ever be tolerated,” Cobb County police Capt. J.D. Adcock wrote in a Nov. 24 letter to Baker.
When Adcock said that Lawson’s behavior “is not now nor will ever be tolerated,” what he really meant was, “we’ll move him to another part of town so he can continue this behavior and subjugate other ‘people’ who he doesn’t ‘care about.’”
On Thursday, Baker told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Lawson should lose his job.
“I’m a teacher. If I say something like that to a child, there would be a firestorm and immediately I would lose my job,” Baker said. “Obviously, he’s not there to protect and serve me, or people of color.”
Of course, this is not the first time Lawson has conducted himself in such a manner. Lawson faced a mass of controversy when he was accused of racially profiling and subsequently harassing a County Commissioner.
Commissioner Lisa Cupid said Lawson followed her so close in his undercover car that she thought he was going to ram her. Apparently Lawson thought that Cupid’s actions were ‘suspicious’ and deserved police inquiry — she had been studying for the bar exam.
Cupid said of her experience with Lawson, that he “was not there to protect and serve. He was there to harass and intimidate.”
Watch the video below: