Incident Shows Importance Of Standing Up For Each Other

Incident Shows Importance Of Standing Up For Each Other

RESIST! POLICE BRUTALITY, SOLIDARITY 





Last week, an elderly African-American man was walking through a wealthy neighborhood just outside of Washington D.C when he was confronted by two African-American Washington Metro Police.

Without any reason, the officers stopped the man and began to question him.  The man had allegedly expressed some dissatisfaction with how he was being singled out, and the officers then ordered him to get on the ground.

Jody Westby, a white, female attorney and CEO of a company called Global Cyber Risk LLC, witnessed the altercation while working from her home office.  She immediately ran out to confront the police, and asked her housekeeper to record the developing situation.

Westby quickly ran to the man’s defense, saying that he was a friend and associate of many people in the area.

The police informed Westby that they were responding to a report of burglary, and said that they stopped to question the man to see if he had anything to do with the incident.

Westby did not back down, and demanded that the officers tell her the address of where the report came from.  When they provided her with the address, she informed them that they were blocks away from the alleged crime and weren’t even in the right neighborhood.

She then informed the officers that she is an attorney and that they did not have the right to detain him.  After threatening to report the officers, she picked the man up and carried him away, saying to the them “please leave our neighborhood.”

Westby then said to the officers as they were driving away, “Just because he’s black doesn’t mean he’s here to rob a house. He works for us. He’s been in this neighborhood for 30 years.”

Westby later said that “You got a white woman and a Hispanic woman standing up for a black man against two black cops…It was shameful how they behaved. And if it were Columbia Heights, or some other neighborhood, it’d probably just be worse. It was very interesting, in the sense of getting a picture of how black cops treat black people…And how humiliating that was for him. And how they were treating him just like a dog.”

This incident shows how important it is for people to stick up for one another and start recording and asking questions when someone is being hassled by a police officer.  If there was just one person like Jody Westby on every street, this world would be a much safer place.