The New York Times reports on yet another example of sweaty southern law enforcement going after the black man. The charge? Working While Black.
“The mayor and police department of a predominantly black Miami suburb have been hit with a federal civil rights lawsuit over allegations of aggressive police tactics, including stop and frisk searches and arbitrary arrests, targeting African Americans.
The lawsuit against the city of Miami Gardens, filed on Friday in U.S. District Court, alleges a long history of police abuse and racial profiling in the crime-plagued suburb on the northern outskirts of Miami.
… Miami Gardens Mayor Oliver Gilbert III, lead defendant in the lawsuit, did not immediately return phone calls or an email from Reuters seeking comment.
Another plaintiff in the lawsuit is identified as Earl Sampson, 28, an African-American and employee of the Quick Stop who was repeatedly stopped once a week for four years, or about 288 times, the suit says.
On numerous occasions, it said Sampson had been arrested for trespassing while at work stocking the shelves or taking out the trash at the Quick Stop store.”
Now it’s hard to argue that there might actually be legitimate law enforcement purpose in arresting someone 288 times for trespassing at your own place of employment while working. So something has clearly gone off the rails in Miami Gardens, but is this a case of racial profiling as the New York Times thinks?
Looking at the defendants named in the case, I wonder…
The Mayor, Oliver G. Gilbert III
The former Mayor, Shirley Gibbons
Chief of Police Matthew Boyd
Deputy Police Chief Paul Miller
You get the idea.
I’m curious as to why this employee and this convenience store is being targeted and I think it’s clear that there is some targeting going on. But I think it’s more complicated than just racial. If the primary defendants in the lawsuit are black, it seems like calling this racial profiling is missing the boat. But I guess when all you have is a racial hammer, everything looks like stop and frisk.
Mike Street Station 
The owner of the store is an Arab man, and black people do not like “foreigners” owning businesses in black communities.
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You may have a point, that this is all about the owner rather than the employee who was actually getting arrested. Without getting the version from the city and police department it’s hard to say for sure.
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It is racial profiling but complex, and sadly, it is evidence we are becoming more like other countries, instead of they adopting American values.
I can understand the B&W conclusions arrived by the fact that all parties are Black people, but this is a ‘We’ vs ‘They’ based on their race, but also intertesselation with economic prejudices. Long after the Irish were not welcome in Protestant America, and we had our ‘Catholic President’, economic blackballing continued based on your address, which for immigrant location clusters, continues to identify your race or religion.
The often less discussed factor of racial prejudices is that it encompasses Geo-location -as is ‘they are South side’ , ‘they work at blank’, ‘they belong to that church’…made you who you are.
Yes whites have prejudices against those outside their status, as do Hispanic people, as do African Americans, hell, you can even see this phenomena in small towns, when your family name gives you a lifelong sentence.
‘Other side of the tracks’ is very much an alive stigma, and those who have escaped it, cut their ties by whatever means necessary -illogical racism is one of them
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Stories like this always make me suspicious. Claims of wrongdoing by police are often made up out of whole cloth, or at the very least, inflated to ridiculous proportions. Him being arrested for trespassing on “numerous occasions” at his job doesn’t ring true. And some attorneys will believe any story their client will tell them. http://armedrobbery.wordpress.com/2008/03/03/stupid-crook-tricks-every-picture-tells-a-story/
I’m inclined to wait for more evidence before passing judgment on this story. But my guess is that the case will just fizzle out, and we’ll never hear what happened from the media.
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I don’t believe that the police are immune from wrong doing, and in this case, there well may be wrongdoing. However it doesn’t seem to me that black cops and a black city government are out to get a convenience store worker because he’s black.
But you’re right. Unless the law suit is successful and there is some civil rights race issue comes out, we’ll never hear of this case. The media isn’t good at follow up, particularly when the truth violates the narrative. This year has been noteworthy in the sheer number of “hate hoaxes” that received wide reportage but when exposed as hoaxes, were no longer covered. In fact, the only MSM coverage on a hoax exposure was the lesbian ex-Marine waitress. But if you stil think that Klansman are still running around Oberlin College spray painting racist graffiti around campus,, that was fake. In fact, the real story was that the College participated in the cover up. But that was only covered in the alternative media.
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