Robert C. Koehler: Armed racism keeps no one safe
“Get out of the car! Get out of the car NOW!!”
The officer — the mad man with a badge — probably shouts those words 50 times at the driver, Second Lt. Caron Nazario, at a gas station in Windsor, Va., all the while holding a gun a foot from his face. Nazario, who is black and Latino, had just been pulled over for not having a rear license plate (he did have one but, you know, we all make mistakes) and . . . fasten your seatbelts! . . . driving with tinted windows. Of course the cops had their guns drawn.
The incident happened last December, buthas only recently been made public. While it did not, thank God, culminate in a shooting — beyond the use of pepper spray — the video reveals an oh, so typical American scenario: a person of color suddenly caught, for no sane reason, in a life-threatening situation at the hands of someone whose job is to keep Americans safe.
