THREAD: While investigating a jail, I met a Black teenager who was taken from the street by armed government agents, put in metal chains, and kept in a cage b/c he couldn’t pay a ticket a cop gave him for “sagging his pants.” This is what's “normal” in the “justice system.” (1)
A reasonable person may view what the cops did as a violent kidnapping. It felt that way to the child's family. But in our society, it actually counts as a "crime" committed *by the child* that cops report to the media as part of a "crime surge" in "high-crime neighborhoods." (2)
When the jail guards worked with the prosecutor and judge to keep the child in a cage unless his family paid a "cash bond," none of those "law enforcement" cared to enforce the U.S. Constitution to help the child. He was never compensated, and no one was held accountable. (3)
The U.S. cages Black people at 6 times the rate of South Africa at the height of Apartheid. And yet the corporate media fabricates a "surge" of "crime" without the slightest scrutiny of how police don't even count or report their own crimes. (4)
https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1403078371467214854
Somehow, this police kidnapping of a Black child who couldn't pay a fine for sagging his pants is turned into a piece of crime data that **police use to justify higher police budgets.** And journalists just play right into this by mindlessly regurgitating police crime stats. (5)
For decades, in every city, county, and state, there has been a bipartisan consensus to perpetrate this race-based violence among both Democrats and Republicans. And then there's the media teaching people not to even see it as violence. (End)
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