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Georgia Police Officer Tells White Woman ‘We Only Kill Black People’

I could not, if I tried my hardest and spent all day trying, find a better example of people who react to the Black Lives Matter movement by saying All Lives Matter (or especially Blue Lives Matter) are idiots than this story. No one doubts that people’s lives matter and we shouldn’t go around killing them, but police have shown a certain disregard for the lives of black people, at least in the United States.

You may remember the body cam footage that came late last month of officers scrambling to explain why they pulled over a black woman in a nice car when she turned out to be their boss. Well now, courtesy of WSB-TV Atlanta, we have dashcam footage of an officer telling a woman “we only kill black people, right?”

According to their report:

Cobb County police Chief Mike Register told Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Mark Winne that after Channel 2 Action News submitted an open-records request, he and his command staff looked at the video.

“Remember, we only kill black people. We only kill black people, right?” the Cobb County police officer can be heard saying on the video.

On Friday, they opened an internal investigation.

Register said the officer heard on video is Lt. Greg Abbott. Register said Abbott has been assigned to administrative duties pending the outcome of the investigation.

According to Register, the recording is part of a DUI stop. The woman said she was hesitant to put her hands down to pick up a cellphone because she didn’t want to get shot.

“No matter what context it was said, it shouldn’t have been said,” Register said.

I agree, this goes way beyond dumb things someone says and doesn’t really mean. Even though I can see a perfectly rational explanation for the officer’s statement, it doesn’t make it acceptable. The willingness of police to kill black people at the slightest provocation, or even entirely absent of provocation, should be treated as serious problem and something that highlights the very real institutional racism that’s still alive today, not an offhandedly comment to make white ladies feel safe.

Thankfully, as is not often the case in this situation, WSB-TV is reporting Police Chief Mike Register has told them “the recommendation is to fire” Lt Greg Abbott. Normally, I would say we’re too quick to call for people to be fired in situations like this. But as a police officer, Greg Abbott caries a gun and is supposed to represent the best of us. He’s supposed to be held to a higher standard, and too often we fail to hold police officers to those high standards. When we do, it tarnishes the perception of law enforcement as a whole, and no one is hurt more than by the officers who meet or exceed the standards they should set. You know, aside from unarmed black men minding their own business.

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