Don’t think there was anything particularly rare about the language that trooper used in the notorious video.
Warren Bolton says he’s gotten "some pretty interesting feedback on my trooper column" in today’s paper. He shared this "gem" with me a little while ago:
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 2:47 PM
To: Bolton, Warren
Subject: Re: Trooper’s actions
Bolton;The only thing that trooper did wrong was in not shooting the bastard down. At least that would have put one less nigger crimmal [sic] out of business.Val Green
Warren gets this sort of thing all too often. So perhaps you can see why he worries that, as he said in his column today, "we’re not there yet" in the year 2008.
Related Posts
I may have been kicked off the Family Forum blog for artistic profanity…I’m not sure. I just want to post about some shots fired in Lexington this evening. E-mail to Sheriff Metts this evening around 6 PM:
Subject: Shots Again
To: jmetts@lex-co.com
Shots fired south of Old Cherokee Road — probably in the area of Park Road/Harmony Hills Produce.
Between 5:45 & 5:50 PM: 5 shots fired.
5:55: 2 more shots fired.
I know this is legal — but I hope it doesn’t mean that 5 more college students are going to be murdered tonight. Or seven.
Hope a competent investigator is “on it.”
No, Warren — we are definitely not there yet. Much of law enforcement is still in a redneck stranglehold. And apparently not even pretending to want to get a grip on it. Sad.
No, JaM, we’re not there yet. But we have reached a place I don’t understand.
Here’s the quote: “You better run, n——, because I’m fixin’ to kill you.”
Four years later, two top law enforecement officials have lost their jobs and all anybody’s talking about is the racial slur.
I’m certainly not condoning this racial slur or any other one, but the day a black trooper pulls me over and says, “You better run, cracker, because I’m fixin’ to kill you,” I won’t be the least bit concerned about what the fellow wearing the gun called me.
In my head, a threat to kill is much more serious than a racial slur. If our society has reached the point we don’t feel that way, we’ve got something analogous to a penny wise-pound foolish attitude about crime.
You get exactly what you pay for. In other words, if you pay redneck wages, you get redneck help….all the way to the top!
How sad.
I agree completely with weldon vii, because I thought the same thing. When anyone is more concerned with what their called, substitute any expletive you desire, followed by the phrase I’m going to kill you, well something is wrong with those people.
Have you people been sitting around with your head in the sand? What you’ve seen on television is about a 5 second clip of what happened. It’s like watching 5 seconds of a basketball game, if you see one team score do you automatically believe the other team lost? Why not wait until you have the whole story before determining your opinion… other than the fact that’s what Brad wants you to do.
Actually, Bill C., I’ve talked to a friend in law enforcement about not only the incident that got the two officials fired, but also the incident reported at length a couple of days ago in The State, in which a woman was handcuffed to the bumper of a car that had been driven by an “acquaintance.”
You’re right. We haven’t seen anything like the whole story. What reporting we have seen was slanted to make troopers in no-win situations look bad.
That’s the way it is when one stereotype (law enforcement treats black people unfairly) replaces an old stereotype (black people commit more crime).
It would be nice if we just tried to do the right thing every time instead of relying on our prejudices, be they old prejudices or new, politically correct prejudices.
But don’t expect that to happen any time soon. The prejudice ball will probably still be bouncing back and forth long after all of us are gone.
Hey Stevens,
Here is the grand sum of redneck wages I get for playing hall [of crime] monitor over here in Lexington County:
$0.00
We are in dire need of some new leadership over here so I can get back to my needlepoint. All this free crime detecting and reporting is wearing mighty thin.