Chase completes his memories of the unsuccessful search for guns at the Red Club, and his father intervenes.
“It’s called, ‘I’m looking for something to cover my butt.’ It’s not about color, it’s about power,” Greg Young said. “When I was training (officers), whether it was black, white, Chinese, it didn’t matter. Some guys take their gun and their badge and go crazy. They just can’t handle That. “
“No, it was about color,” Chase replied. “It was a predominantly black environment and all white officers.”
This is kitchen dialogue as it should be: a free and unfiltered crosstalk, divergent but not hostile, oppositional but without interruptions or escalations of anger. As the Youngs voice their opinions over a cold glass table, it’s easy to imagine their voices carrying over a home-cooked meal with a warm, inviting aroma wafting from a stove.
The subject turns to roadside checks.
Wesley Young, Chase’s 22-year-old sister, is doing a lot more listening than talking tonight. But it is expressed when it is pointed out that traffic stops gone wrong represent only a tiny and fractional percentage of all stops and can be wrongly characterized as representative of all law enforcement through mainstream or social media. While that may be true, it’s little relief when lights flash blue and red in a rearview mirror, she notes.
“When you get arrested, you don’t know who you’re talking to,” she said. “You don’t know if you’re going to have a new cop who wants something.”
According to Bureau of Justice Statistics data cited in the Washington Post, there were more than 50 million police interactions in 2015, with “about 0.00002 percent” resulting in fatal shootings. Yet the Post also found that “blacks represented a disproportionate share of deaths linked to traffic stops” in 2015.
It has become common for bystanders to upload video clips of traffic stops and street arrests to their cell phones on social media platforms, some of which have provided the impetus for major news stories and internal police investigations. . Bystander videos, in addition to footage from surveillance cameras, police car dashboard cameras, and police-worn body cameras, have played a significant role in how many high-profile police shootings, such as the deaths of Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Walter Scott and Laquan McDonald, were received by the public.
The Youngs once again exchange generational perspectives.
“That’s a good thing,” Chase said. “Liability. The policeman better know his training, otherwise some guy can sue.”
Kenny Young, Greg’s brother and a retired 26-year veteran of the U.S. Capitol Police, sees bystander video clips another way. He and his brothers, with their extensive experience, say they have known cellphone video enthusiasts who interfered with traffic stops, attempted to draw officers into conflicts, and truncated their video clips in ways that gave police an image as bad as possible by removing relevant elements. context.
“There are now people trying to make money on YouTube who are showing up at stops and harassing the police officer when you’re just trying to do your job,” Kenny said. “People watching these videos are trying to show half the story. But there are cops doing things they shouldn’t be doing, who shouldn’t be cops at all.”
Chase’s uncle, Bernard Joseph, estimates he made 400 to 500 traffic stops during his two decades with the Prince George’s County (Md.) police force. He’s had some crazy ones: Once, he says, four occupants sprinted from their vehicle before he even approached the car, and another time, he had to break up a husband and wife while punching each other in the front seat. No one ever pointed a gun at him, but throughout his years of service, he saw a steady rise in tension and danger.
He and Greg both believe that traffic stops that go wrong, even violent, are often the work of police officers who have deviated from their training in one way or another. But they also see the problems from the side of citizens.
“As a cop, you say, ‘I want to search you for my own safety, and while I’m doing it, don’t look back.’ And the first thing they do is turn around and say, “I didn’t do anything.” They have to follow that first order, and they don’t,” Greg said. “It escalates from there. If I’m holding you by the back of your belt doing a security search and you turn towards me, it could go anywhere at that point. Because as far as I know, you have a gun. You I have to understand that the police are human, so they are afraid too. »
Joseph advised his son on how to behave during a traffic stop, and he summed it up this way: Being right can wait.
“I told (my son) what to do: put your hands on the wheel, don’t make sudden movements, follow all orders,” he said. “It’s a stress that I feel, being a dad, especially with an African-American son, and me being a former police officer, it hurts me to have to do this. Greg and I always tried to make them understand how much it’s important It’s compliance, even if the police officer is wrong. It’s not a question of right or wrong, it’s a question of life and death. If you comply and a police officer has wrong, something can be done about it. But non-compliance is what leads to children dying.”
Last year, Chase Young filmed a brief public service video as part of OSU’s Real Life Wednesdays program in which he demonstrated how drivers should behave when stopped by police. Young didn’t say a word during the 53-second demonstration, but he wasn’t afraid to explain why he participated.
“I did it because of everything you see with traffic stops going wrong. My race, people of color, they get shot when they get pulled over,” Young said. “So I thought it was good for me to learn something when I get arrested, and also to show other guys my age how to get out of it as best as possible.”
