RealGM

The Cop Was the Hero in One Viral Video. Another Told a Different Story.

Bobby White was known as the “Basketball Cop” after millions saw a video of him shooting hoops with local teenagers. A recording from two years earlier shows him throwing a young Black man on the hood of his car during an arrest.



By Nicholas Casey
Aug. 15, 2020
Updated 2:58 p.m. ET

Aahtrell Johnson remembered the police car rolling up, just before he was about to take his shot at the basket under the pine trees. It was 2016, and his neighbor had called 911, complaining that he was getting loud in the street. A white officer named Bobby White had been sent to respond.

As Mr. White, a Florida native with a trimmed goatee, approached Mr. Johnson, who is Black, the officer could see the 17-year-old was only playing basketball with his friend. Rather than issue a ticket, Mr. Johnson recalled, the officer asked if he could join the game. He shot some hoops with the teenagers, and others came out of their homes.

No one noticed that Mr. White’s dashboard camera was running the whole time.

The video — posted online by the Police Department afterward and watched by millions of viewers — was a moment of hope in an age where recordings of police brutality were the ones going viral. Mr. White became a celebrity in Gainesville, Fla., and was nicknamed “Basketball Cop.” Sports stars came to play pickup games with the Gainesville teens. Mr. White founded a nonprofit to ease relations between the police and Black youths and was invited on NBC’s “Nightly News” and ESPN to promote it.

“He didn’t look at us like we were criminals,” Mr. Johnson, now 22, said.

But Chanae Jackson, a real estate agent who was born in Gainesville, had a different understanding of policing in the city. Her son had a troubling encounter with law enforcement in 2018, and she became a vocal critic of the department. This May, someone sent her another video of Mr. White: A cellphone recording of him slamming a Black teenager into the hood of his patrol car.

After the killing of George Floyd, Ms. Jackson decided she would release the video.

And with just a click on Facebook, she set off an uproar that stripped away not only Mr. White’s image as the face of what good neighborhood policing should be but also the assumption — embraced by liberal-minded reformers in Gainesville and across the country — that fixing racial bias could be as simple as retraining officers and focusing on “community policing.”

“The culture of police departments creates an environment where there are no real consequences for these officers,” Ms. Jackson wrote in her post under the clip of Mr. White’s encounter with the teenager, who was pulled over for

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Spot31 wrote:Yep overall crime is down in NYC 3% from last year... except for the increase in Homicides, Shooting Victims, Burglaries, Grand Larceny Autos, you know just the violent stuff. But wth let's defund the police.

Spot31 wrote:Yep overall crime is down in NYC 3% from last year... except for the increase in Homicides, Shooting Victims, Burglaries, Grand Larceny Autos, you know just the violent stuff. But wth let's defund the police.

As such, the crime drop appears to be hiding a very disturbing trend where homicides remain unchanged and intimate partner batteries are increasing. Since many offenders would presumably be committing less serious crimes in a non-pandemic world, we raise attention to the possibility that mandatory lockdown orders may have taken minor offenders and placed them into situations where there is rampant opportunity for intimate partner violence, serious batteries, and homicides.

Moreover, the leading feature of these crime changes will be that the government ordered stay-at-home mandates, which impacted the routine activities of entire populations. The variation in these orders by state and community regarding when the orders were implemented and rescinded and what restrictions were in place has provided a naturally occurring, quasi-randomized control experiment. For example, researchers can compare states and communities that released prisoners early, increased or reduced alcohol availability, began lock-downs early, crime in public places as opposed to residential and mixed land use, and operationalize many variables that were previously intangible or inarticulable.

The findings emerging from the COVID-19 crisis will impact criminological theories for the next several decades. We encourage researchers to embark on in-depth explorations of the data made available from the pandemic and to search for not only why, where, when, and to what extent crime fell, but also how to use this knowledge for practical applications after the world returns to ‘normal’ and concludes this experiment in crime reduction and extraordinary test of human determination and resiliency.

NYKAL wrote:you can't keep putting a band aid on top of a broken system. Especially a system designed to OPPRESS. You have to tear it down and replace it all together.

BKlutch wrote:I think many people are so stressed that spur of the moment, thoughtless crimes are increasing. People who live together and continue to get along well must have an incredibly strong relationship. So many are at one anther's throats just from being cooped up so long together. Understanding this kind of crime will take some science.

What will not take much science to understand is professionally instigated crime caused by those trying to make peaceful demonstrators look violent. This is planned violence and nothing less. Which part of the political spectrum is behind this?

HarthorneWingo wrote:

NYKAL wrote:you can't keep putting a band aid on top of a broken system. Especially a system designed to OPPRESS. You have to tear it down and replace it all together.

Yes. We need "Peace Officers" not "police officers." But that will have to come with systemic changes to the how PDs are structured, what tasks will be taken away from them, and how they will be permitted to interact with the public, who they appear to have a whole lot of disdain for.

Spot31 wrote:Yep overall crime is down in NYC 3% from last year... except for the increase in Homicides, Shooting Victims, Burglaries, Grand Larceny Autos, you know just the violent stuff. But wth let's defund the police.

Fat Kat wrote:

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ITGM wrote:

Fat Kat wrote:

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In a perfect world, the cop would've tased him or used non lethal force before he was allowed to gingerly walk all the way back to his vehicle; Nevertheless, the dude should've known better.

Are We Ther Yet wrote:

ITGM wrote:

Fat Kat wrote:

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In a perfect world, the cop would've tased him or used non lethal force before he was allowed to gingerly walk all the way back to his vehicle; Nevertheless, the dude should've known better.

Resist arrest all you want. That's on you if the cops are gonna do dumb **** afterwards. Not sure why no one had a taser or rubber bullets or whatever other forms of non lethal weapon drawn but...this dude fuqqed up. Going to reach in the car like that would be allowed? Stupid move.

HarthorneWingo wrote:

Are We Ther Yet wrote:

ITGM wrote:
In a perfect world, the cop would've tased him or used non lethal force before he was allowed to gingerly walk all the way back to his vehicle; Nevertheless, the dude should've known better.

Resist arrest all you want. That's on you if the cops are gonna do dumb **** afterwards. Not sure why no one had a taser or rubber bullets or whatever other forms of non lethal weapon drawn but...this dude fuqqed up. Going to reach in the car like that would be allowed? Stupid move.

Stupid move? Maybe. Deserved to die? No.

This is just another example of dumbass cops resorting to deadly force because they're too lazy and/or stupid and/or don't give a fck to handle this situation correctly. They had three cops and once suspect and couldn't handle it. They all need to be fired and the shooter criminally charged.

You say "don't resist" like it's just a routine experience. Have you ever been confronted by moron cop? I have. Trust me, you don't know how you'll react until you are in that situation.

Fat Kat wrote:

HarthorneWingo wrote:

Are We Ther Yet wrote:
Resist arrest all you want. That's on you if the cops are gonna do dumb **** afterwards. Not sure why no one had a taser or rubber bullets or whatever other forms of non lethal weapon drawn but...this dude fuqqed up. Going to reach in the car like that would be allowed? Stupid move.

Stupid move? Maybe. Deserved to die? No.

This is just another example of dumbass cops resorting to deadly force because they're too lazy and/or stupid and/or don't give a fck to handle this situation correctly. They had three cops and once suspect and couldn't handle it. They all need to be fired and the shooter criminally charged.

You say "don't resist" like it's just a routine experience. Have you ever been confronted by moron cop? I have. Trust me, you don't know how you'll react until you are in that situation.

Truth of the matter is you’re only allowed to be so smart as a cop. They refuse to employ high IQ people. A psychological profile would reveal that many of them were probably bullied and/or are virulent racist. Garbage men and sewage workers are more valuable and important members of our society.

The shooting in Kenosha, a city located between Milwaukee and Chicago, occurred after 5 p.m. Sunday, when officers responded to a domestic incident, police said. Witnesses told the Kenosha News that Blake was trying to break up a fight and that police first attempted to stun him with a Taser.

HarthorneWingo wrote:

Fat Kat wrote:

HarthorneWingo wrote:
Stupid move? Maybe. Deserved to die? No.

This is just another example of dumbass cops resorting to deadly force because they're too lazy and/or stupid and/or don't give a fck to handle this situation correctly. They had three cops and once suspect and couldn't handle it. They all need to be fired and the shooter criminally charged.

You say "don't resist" like it's just a routine experience. Have you ever been confronted by moron cop? I have. Trust me, you don't know how you'll react until you are in that situation.

Truth of the matter is you’re only allowed to be so smart as a cop. They refuse to employ high IQ people. A psychological profile would reveal that many of them were probably bullied and/or are virulent racist. Garbage men and sewage workers are more valuable and important members of our society.

Defund the police and fund "public safety officers" who'll have a whole new directive and purpose in responding to the community. Tear it down except for the detective divisions. Get rid of the disciplinary procedures they've negotiated with the unions. Create a police disciplinary commission which has no connection to the police department or local DA's office.