I had no idea that reckless eyeballing, once a crime black men who looked a white person directly in the eyes could die for, remained a punishable offense. I’m just happy that John Felton was only given a warning for this Neo-Jim Crow offense.
Thankfully, Felton used his camera phone to record the episode. Here’s some of the transcription:
After a bit of back and forth, Felton tells the officer he’s using his cell phone to record the conversation and insists he had used his turn signal.
“You did signal,” the officer clarifies. “You just didn’t do it 100 feet prior to your turn.”
“You just needed a reason to pull me over, sir,” Felton responds, handing over his license and registration. “Is there a reason you pulled me over other than that?”
“Jesus Christ, this is so childish,” he adds, speaking to himself.
The officer walks away, then returns a short time later with a written warning for the infraction.
“No disrespect, I don’t have anything against police officers,” Felton tells the officer, “but all the shit that’s going on now, that’s some scary shit to have a police officer just trailing you. … Why were you trailing me?”
“Because you made direct eye contact with me and held onto it while I was passing you,” he replies. “If you want to keep talking about it, I’ll just give you a citation for the violation and we can take it to court. I’m not going to argue about it anymore.”
Talk about an abuse of power…
In Reverie Blog 