Neetzan Zimmerman at Gawker: "T. J. Holmes was one mile from his Atlanta home when he was suddenly pulled over by two police cars. The normally affable CNN anchor proceeded to live-tweet the stop, getting progressively angerier with every status update."

  • EH

    It’s the law enforcement version of CNN’s headline-hunting. ACA wasn’t overturned, and he wasn’t a criminal. No harm, no foul, just a little irrational exuberance.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      No harm, no foul

      State-sponsored intimidation against non-white people is ‘no harm’?

      • korthmat

        Why does it matter that Holmes is black?  State-sponsored intimidation causes a harm, period–even if committed against someone as lily-white as I am.

        • Antinous / Moderator

          You have a point.  And if you were nearly as likely to be stopped for no good reason, you’d have a much more meaningful point.

          • myke

            Are you really suggesting that a person being intimidated by police isn’t as meaningful because of the color of their skin?

            Because that is certainly how that statement came off to me and I have really hard time believing that’s what you meant.

            How about if any instance is wrong and, frankly, equally wrong.

            I’m all for finding problem areas via statistics, etc., (e.g.. DWB) and focusing on those, but the intimidation is wrong regardless of race or creed.

          • Antinous / Moderator

            Are you really suggesting that a person being intimidated by police isn’t as meaningful because of the color of their skin?

            Do you not know that non-white people are routinely stopped far more often than white people?

          • myke

            “Do you not know that non-white people are routinely stopped far more often than white people?”

            Um, yes (and duh ), which is why I also had a comment about focusing on problem areas (in the U.S). like blacks being stopped more often.

            But if it’s okay to discount someone’s negative experience with the police due to the color of their skin, then I would argue that you are following the same race-logic as the cops who decided someone is more deserving of being pulled over because of the color of their skin.  (although, if you were suggesting those particular cops are deserving of being pulled over and intimidated for no reasons, I’d likely be with you on you that, although actually being disciplined in an effective manner would be even better ).

          • Antinous / Moderator

            Your response has nothing to do with my comments.

      • EH

        Of course not, but I’m using CNN’s ACA headline-mistake rationale with a soucon (dunno how to put a Frasier-tail on that ‘c’) of sarcasm. They leapt for a truth and missed. In the police case, that would refer to being able to find something to pin on whatever black person they pulled over. How were they suppose to know he was innocent?

        • http://devojane.blogspot.com devophill

          You google the word to find somebody who did put the tail on the ‘c’, then copy-paste it. Soupçon.

          • Antinous / Moderator

            Alt + 0231

            If you can use that system.

          • http://twitter.com/dargaud Guillaume Dargaud

            Press [Compose key], [comma] and [c].

        • SoItBegins

           (On Mac, it’s Option-C.)

          Uh, whatever happened to innocent, until proven guilty?

    • ocker3

      I’m an Australian, and I got your sarcasm :)

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/koocheekoo/ Koocheekoo

    Wow! I am glad he tweeted that and I hope it is followed by an apology from the police. Being pulled over to make sure you have insurance is complete and utter BS. We need more accountability when it comes to the police. Again, glad he documented the experience. 

    • http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

      In light of how the NYPD deals with their overtly racist stop & frisk policies, I’d put better odds on “doubling down on racial profiling while avoiding using the words ‘racial profiling’” than the odds I’d give an apology.

  • fuzzyfuzzyfungus

    Not having some excuse ready for the entirely-possible-situation where the incipient perp opens his door and a haze of weed smoke fails to pour out seems amazingly sloppy on the cops’ part.

    Is it really so hard to accuse the guy of being going X+M in an X MPH zone, or have some stock line about a reported stolen car of the make and model they just pulled over? Lying just isn’t that difficult…

  • CSBD

    I dont see why anyone is surprised at him being pulled over for DWB or possibly DWBWLES… especially in the south.

    • fuzzyfuzzyfungus

      Are we allowed to be surprised that he wasn’t taken down in a hail of inaccurate gunfire when he reached for his phone in order to do some tweeting?

    • Ben Harper

      WLES?

      • http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul

        While Listening to Enya Songs?

      • CSBD

        DWB While Looking Extremely Suspicious

    • Benjamin Terry

      Is anyone surprised that there is an “Is anyone surprised?” comment in this story?  I’m going to presume you are surprised, but really, who would be surprised by such a thing on the internet?  Not me.  I’m not the sort of person who surprises easily.

    • SomeGuyNamedMark

      “Why was I pulled over officer?”
      “Oh, we have a trouble maker here.”

  • ZikZak

    Fortunately it happened to a high profile, well-connected black man this time, rather than the usual poor black youth.  At least he’ll be able to follow up and call the cops out on their racial profiling.

    As he tweeted, he’s far from the only person this happens to.  And an inconvenient traffic stop is far from the worst fate that targets of racial profiling meet.

  • Antinous / Moderator

    Ice Cube has a song title which covers this situation nicely.

  • http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli

    If the cops really had the nerve, they could have charged him for using his cell phone while he was behind the wheel of his car (and pretend that they pulled him over for suspected texting while driving).

    • http://twitter.com/Ronamo Jaron R. Hendrix

      If they did pull him over for texting while driving, it would have been fully justifiable. ..Sonny Perdue signed the “texting while driving” law into effect a couple of years ago for better or worse.  http://www1.legis.ga.gov/legis/2009_10/fulltext/sb360.htm 

      As far as the use of not one, but two police cruisers for a single person, that seems to have become standard practice in Georgia.  I rarely see a car pulled over by a single policeman, and if it has been, they’re waiting for the nearest cruiser to show up.  I’m not saying that single pullovers don’t happen…just that they’re increasingly rare, regardless of the civilian’s race, age or gender.