A recently discovered dash cam video showed a police officer assuaging a frightened white woman by telling her that cops only kill black people.
On Wednesday, WSB-TV released a video they obtained of a July 2016 DUI stop. The woman tells Lt. Greg Abbott that she’s afraid to take her hands off the steering wheel and reach for her cellphone because of the videos she’s seen of cops callously killing unarmed Black civilians. In 2016, more than 250 Black Americans were killed by police.
“I’ve just seen way too many videos of cops….” the woman said before trailing off.
The 30-year law enforcement official responds with:
“But you’re not Black. Remember, we only shoot Black people. Yeah. We only kill Black people, right? All the videos you’ve seen, have you seen the Black people get killed?”
While the video was brought to the attention of police chief Mike Registar last Friday, the Cobbs County police department’s investigation of the incident is still ongoing. Abbott has been placed on administrative leave.
Abbott’s lawyer, Lance LoRusso, claimed that the dashcam recording is being misinterpreted.
“He was attempting to de-escalate a situation involving an uncooperative passenger,” LoRusso told WSB-TV. “In context, his comments were clearly aimed at attempting to gain compliance by using the passenger’s own statements and reasoning to avoid making an arrest.”
Regardless of the officer’s intentions, Cobbs County Police Chief Mike Register insisted the comment should never have been made.
“No matter what the context it was said, it shouldn’t have been said,” Register said. “We’re not making excuses. We’re meeting this head-on and we’re going to deal with it.”
