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'Like We Were Dogs': The Story of Ryan Moats
The first time Ryan Moats touched a football in an NFL game he ran it 40-yards for a touchdown. That was part of an 11-carry 114-yard debut for the Philadelphia Eagles rookie.
This would seem to be a charmed life. Currently, Moats plays for the Houston Texans in the football mad Lone Star State. But none of that protected Moats from one of the uglier cases of DWB (driving while black) that's come across the wires. Moats' money and fame couldn't insulate him. But a police dashboard video camera recorded the ugly interaction shedding light on a practice all too common in these United States.
Moats was rushing, hazard lights on, with his wife, Tamishia and her family to the Baylor Regional Medical Center. Tamishia's mother, Joanetta, Collinsworth, was dying from advanced breast cancer, and the hospital put out the word that they had to get to her bedside right away if they wanted to say good bye. But then their lives collided with the 25-year-old Powell, and the Moats family ordeal became something more than a personal tragedy.
Powell pulled the Moats family over in the hospital parking lot for rolling through a red light. Tamishia jumped out of the car to rush to her mother , and Powell drew his gun, yelling, "Get in there! Let me see your hands!"
"My mom is dying," she shouted back.
"I saw in his eyes that he really did not care," Tamishia Moats said. Ms. Moats and her great-aunt ignored the officer and headed into the hospital. (Powell says he "merely" drew his gun, while Ms. Moats says it was pointed at her as she rushed in the facility. Ryan Moats has said that he feared for her life.)
Ryan Moats and his grandfather in law - the father of the dying Ms. Collinsworth, were then kept for 13 minutes. "You really want to go through this right now?" Moats pleaded. "My mother-in-law is dying. Right now!"
The response was the threat of arrest. "I can screw you over. I would rather not do that. You obviously will dictate everything that happens; and right now, your attitude sucks."
Moats tried to explain why he rolled through a red light: "I waited until no traffic was coming. I got seconds before she's gone, man." Powell responded that he wanted a license, registration, and proof of insurance.
Moats began to lose patience and said, "Just give me a ticket or whatever." "Shut your mouth," Powell told him. "You can cooperate and settle down, or I can just take you to jail for running a red light."
After Moats urged him to hurry up so he could be there with his wife, Powell - in a slow cadence - spoke down to Moats like he was a toddler. "If you want to keep this going, I'll just put you in handcuffs," Powell said, "and I'll take you to jail for running a red light."
Moats began to say "Yes sir" repeatedly, clearly trying to be done with the Officer.
But Powell wasn't done. "Understand what I can do," he continued. "I can tow your truck. I can charge you with fleeing. I can make your night very difficult." "I understand," Moats responded. "I hope you'll be a great person and not do that."
As this is taking place, hospital security guards rushed to the scene to tell Powell that Ms. Collinsworth was on death's door.
Powell ignored them, wasting several more minutes checking Moats for arrest warrants. Then a nurse ran to the car insisting that the Moats family be allowed inside.
"Hey, that's the nurse," another officer can be heard telling Powell. "She said that the mom's dying right now, and she's wanting to know if they can get him up there before she dies." " All right," Powell replied. "I'm almost done."
Moats and the father of Jonetta Collinsworth, then ran inside, but unlike Ms. Moats, did not make it to Ms. Collinsworth's bedside in time to say goodbye.
The furor generated by the videotape has led Powell to be reassigned and the ticket to be dismissed. Police spokesperson Lt. Andy Harvey said, "There were some things that were said that were disturbing, to say the least."
This wasn't the first "high profile arrest" for Powell. He placed Maritza Thomas, the wife of former Dallas Cowboy linebacker Zach Thomas in cuffs and then prison for three hours. The crime: an illegal u-turn. "This in no way compares to what happened to Ryan Moats and his family," Zach Thomas told The Dallas Morning News. "But we wanted to tell our story, not knowing how many others have been affected by Officer Powell...."
Moats said after the fact, "For him to not even be sympathetic at all, and basically we're dogs or something and we don't matter - it basically shocked me," he said.
It is shocking, but it isn't rare.
According to the most recent Justice Department report, Blacks were almost three times as likely as whites to be searched at a traffic stop. They were also twice as likely to be arrested, and almost four times as likely to be the victim of "excessive force."
This is also the latest of a series of high profile confrontations between cops and jocks.
When you layer the "driving while black" pandemic on top of the dynamic of pro athletes more comfortable on a pedestal than in a police car, you have a recipe for future tragedies. Let the Moats's ordeal serve as a warning and not a harbinger. And let Officer Powell be compelled to find another line of work.
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15 Comments so far
Show AllWell it looks like this sort of thing came to a head in Oakland,CA very recently, and the right wing seems to be having a field day with it. I've been waiting to read an article about that on CD as well, something sensible instead of the inflammatory garbage I'm seeing from both sides elsewhere.
On one hand you have people sticking by cops as if they're all Officer Friendly, and on the other hand, people are hailing a desperate violent criminal (rapist) as a hero.
Meanwhile, we have yet another killer cop in our midst in my hometown...
http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/news/2009/03/30804.php
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/18940125/detail.html
The same cop killed a young black boy 7 years ago and then killed another unarmed person, this time a white guy.
My father recently was hassled by cops. He was working an overnight job sometime last year. It was 1:30 AM and he had to report to Altoona to board a train. He was getting money out of an ATM, and was approached by two cops who thought he was drunk. They made him take a breathalizer and everything. My dad says he wanted to shoot those cops! He was just going to work! They wouldn't listen to him! Finally they let him go about his business, but it left my dad with a really bad taste in his mouth.
I'm a white guy, and I'm leery around cops myself. People act as if I shouldn't be for some reason.
Every single day in the US the political right spews a constant running litany of fear-mongering and hatred against people of color. It is all over the airwaves, all over the television sets, all over the few surviving newspapers, and all over the magazines, as well. The blatant and terrifying irresponsibiity of the GOP is mind numbing. Their curent scapegotats are our immigrant populations. Traditionally, the republican party enjoys picking on those with the least ability to defend themselves. Cowardly bastards.
You cannot subject people to a constant diet of fear-mongering and hatred without ill effects. The GOP is relentless-I guess they consider this the only tactic in their political "bag of tricks" that they have left.
This is absolutely conscieneless and completely irresponsible on their parts. Fear-mongering and hatred have no place in anyone's politics-especially in a country with such diversity in their poulation. We need to take a stand against these tactics, and we need to be relentless as well. There is too much at stake here.
Imagine if Ryan Moats were NOT an NFL player...this would NEVER have come to the public's general attention. As with so many things, "we" never have a discussion of national priorities (see military budget vs. education budget, legalization of marijuana, etc.). Why do "we" use our police to regulate traffic so much? Don't they have better things to do?
I dont see the connection to dogs that the title implies.
Wasnt Zirin the guy who said fighting dogs to the death or electrocuting them or setting up rape racks wasnt a big deal in the Vick case? And that blacks had it worse(i.e. never mind the dogs and other animals left to drown in New Orleans--in the case of the university lab animals, left to drown in their cages)
Now based on the title he seems to be saying dogs do have it worse than black people. And uses them as an example of it.
Human supremacists can be really confusing.
Funny thing, the punk cop Powell was put on "paid leave". So, be an obnoxious jerk, and get a paid vacation?
Good point. They should have stripped his license.
My wife, a black woman, was arrested because my three year old put a pair of socks (worth $1.88) under the baby stroller before they walked out the door. The alarm thing went off, so my wife came back through the door at a Burlington's Coat Factory. After searching the stroller and finding the socks she went back in to the approaching hardcore white lady manager to explain. But the manager would not listen and began treating her like a child and called the police. My kids were with her and began crying. When I found out I was pissed because I have done similar things and never been treated like a criminal.
When I started asking around, white people had told me that they had done very similar things at the same store and the manager was forgiving. It aint easy being black in a white man's world.
What is different in your case is that, you know that Afro-Americans are always targetted for mistreatment, better said, "To remind them where there place is."....
In my home town of Homewood, whenever you saw a police car pull someone over, 90% of the time it would be a minority.....On the police blotter would be tickets issued for "failing to signal a change of lane." It goes on in every community...The Powells exist all over the United States......When the new Attorney General said that we, white people were cowards, he meant that we were not willing to face up to our own racist attitudes and stand up for those that are victmized because they are of color.
Officer Powell has had a history of racist confrontations and should have been dismissed by the force......Instead, his bully racist attitude will be rewarded by his fellow bullies at the bars, "Man, you showed that n________!" with slaps on the back and a few free beers.
I am ashamed of Officer Powell and I am ashamed of that store manager that mistreated your wife......They are Eric Holder's examples of "White Cowards" who do not face their own racism!!!!!!
I think breathing while black is at least a misdemeanor in most states. My heart goes out to you.
Mr. Moats, if he's like most NFL running backs is big and bad enough to have demolished this cop like he does defensive players who get in his way. That he did not do so under such extreme provocation is a testimony to not only his own self-control and diacipline, but also his love for his wife and her family and especially his dying mother-in-law.
Mr Powell needs to find some other line of work more suitable for his temperment and attitude. Maybe as a bouncer at a whorehouse or topless bar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4yPGp9GGro
It would be too funny if it were'nt too true.
Poet
The problem is only partly with the cops. The real villians are the judges and legislators who have given cops the power to brutalize.
It's not all about race. It's also about class. The cops and judges who have made the US a police state are nearly all upper or upper middle class. They see the cops as their protectors against the poor. They always side with the cops against the people. It doesn't much matter if its Dems or GOP, the rich love their cops.
You think this shitbag Powell is 'middle class'?
Maybe 'American middle class' - in the CIVILISED world 'middle class' implies behavioural standards that exceed the behaviour of head lice or viruses.
No, the cop was a piece of subhuman shit who gets a boner from having the state-sponsored right to terrorise: he is symptomatic of everything that is wrong with the psychotype that becomes the armed enforcer for the political-parasite class.
I hope that every armed goon like Powell - and Lon Horiuchi, the baby-killing ATF hit-man - die gruesome slow and painful deaths at the hands of skilled pain-merchants. Sadly, their victims show a degree of humanity that is both wasted and misguided on these vermin - and for the moment a lot of the highest-skilled pain merchants work for the government.
Cheers
GT
GT's Market Rant
Regardless of whether Powell loses his job, which he ought to, you may rest assured that public relations damage control will spin this as merely another isolated unfortunate incident arising from the misbehavior of a Bad Apple.
See, Texas can't seem to execute people fast enough to get that deterrence mojo working-- so, God knows there's enough crime down there to keep the police busy!
So the sensible thing to do is "move forward". After all, focusing on the deeper social implications of this outrage won't bring poor Ms. Collinsworth back.
Moving forward! Is there NO problem it can't solve?
· Yr Obd't Servant
No no, it is not "moving forward". It is MoveOn. MoveOn. MoveOn. MoveOn will solve the world's problems.
Im gonna throw this in the mix. At least Moats didnt get popped.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2009/01/07/MNOV154P0R.DTL&o=1
Unfortunately Grant is dead and gone leaving behind his family and new born.