My fourth journal entry addressed blatant racial profiling. On February 16, 2021 Texas native, 18-year-old Rodney Reese was heading home from his job at Walmart when he was stopped by officers from the Plano Police Department who were responding to a welfare check about reports of “a man in a short sleeve shirt stumbling in the snow.” Rodney is a high school senior, lives with his mother only a few blocks away and repeatedly told the officers he was fine.
Rodney was caught on body camera footage that he was “straight” and didn’t need their assistance. The police were caught saying, “Alright, but you’re walking in the middle of the road.” Texas was in the midst of a crazy winter storm, so his decision to walk in the road ultimately was due to the conditions of the sidewalks. Rodney apologized and continued walking home, but for some reason the officers continued to follow him. After two minutes, they put him in handcuffs and arrested him, with the official charge being pedestrian in the roadway. He spent the night in jail.
The Plano Police chief Ed Drain DEFENDED the actions of his officers and was quoted as saying, “There’s a lot of information that we know about this case that we didn’t know at the time. Those officers didn’t know his age. They didn’t know he was 18. They didn’t know he worked at Walmart. They didn’t know where he lived.” Isn’t their job as officers of the law to investigate? Shouldn’t they just have asked him? A few simple questions and skills of deduction would have revealed all was well. Instead they targeted and profiled this man and assumed he was doing wrong because he was a black male.
Rodney’s heartbreaking reaction?
“It’s ‘cause I’m Black, I fit a description. It hurts, man. I don’t even think the call would’ve happened if I wasn’t Black. Honestly, I really don’t.”
According to the NAACP, 84% of Black adults say white people are treated better than black people by police and 63% of white adults agree based on 2019 research on police relations. 87% of Black adults say the U.S. criminal justice system is more unjust towards Black people and 61% of white adults agree. Despite the fact that more white people have been killed by police, Black and Hispanic people are disproportionately impacted. While white people make up a little over 60% of the population, they only make up about 41% of fatal police shootings. Black people make up 13.4% of the population, but make up 22% of fatal police shootings. This does not take into consideration other forms of police brutality, including non-lethal shootings (NAACP.org, 2021) The inherent bias is alive and well in this country.
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Jaysa, thank you for this informative and enlightening Diary of Systemic Injustice. I really enjoyed your method of communicating the importance of how an investigation into the situation should have been done, which would have avoided the entire outcome in the first place. It truly emphasizes the embedded systemic injustice in this country. The provided statistics, in the end, are unsettling yet eye-opening and really highlight the reasons in which this country needs change as soon as possible.
Hi Jaysa! This is an incredibly important post. I hadn’t heard Rodney’s story yet, and it’s heart breaking to know that there are likely many more I won’t ever hear of as well. These kinds of events happen all too often and do not get nearly the amount of media coverage that they should. It is obvious that this story would have gone much differently had Rodney not been a black man. If it had been me, a young white woman, trudging through the weather on the road, I imagine I would only be stopped by police to be offered a ride or asked if I’m alright. I could not imagine being arrested for something like that, which is a big indicator of the difference between the white and black experience in America.