How Not to Get Shot

by D. L. Hughley

  Good response: I’m sorry, Officer.

  Cop: You were going way over the speed limit.

  Bad response: Fuck you!

  Good response: I’m mortified and very sorry, sir.

  Cop: I’m going to let you off with a warning.

  Bad response—Ya know what, they never just let you off with a warning. Fuck it.

  Say “Sir”

  Be sure to call the police officer “sir.” A carefully placed “sir” can work wonders for a white officer’s attitude.

  For a white person, there’s something about being called “sir” that whisks them away to a more genteel time. I don’t know, there’s just something about it that makes them feel nostalgic. . . . It puts white people at ease, like sipping an iced tea on a porch in summertime. One can almost hear the old train whistle blowing, bringing the boys back home. It’s like watching Gone with the Wind—it makes them lament the good old days. Back when America was great and they could fill their lungs with the sweet summer air while the june bugs sang a piece. Back when white people didn’t suffer from “white privilege” or be taken to task for acknowledging their primacy in the world. They were giants—allowed to reign and make the world their own by their own benevolence.

  And hearing “sir” means that you get it. You get it. It means that you’ve been trained well. And that they’re back in charge or that their being in charge is acknowledged, maybe even preferred.

  Summary

  When you’re talking to cops, try not to be rude. Even if the cop is less than a gentleman, you don’t want to give him or her any excuse to get mad with you, or worse. Like Sheriff Clarke said, even though you might think you’re in a conversation, you might actually be getting “verbal commands.” After that, they can move up the “force continuum.” Once you move up the force continuum, talking’s over, maybe permanently.

  Remember:

  Don’t be rude.

  Be approachable and friendly.

  Even if you know the cop is in the wrong, comply and complain later (let’s make sure there’s a later).

  Talking to cops is just like highly dangerous chitchat, except instead of finding out if it’s raining later, you might be finding out that you’re dead.

  3

  Don’t Break the Law!

  The best part of reading white people advice on the Internet is seeing how it’s all laid out so simply. The simplicity of this piece of advice is its key: “Don’t break the law and you won’t get shot.”

  When black people can’t seem to follow this simple advice that has worked for them, white people are just incredulous. They’re frustrated. It’s sooooo simple. Don’t break the law and you won’t have a problem. If only black people could follow simple directions. The implication is that if you weren’t guilty, you wouldn’t get shot. Sure, the death penalty is supposed to be for those tried and convicted of heinous, premeditated capital murder, but let’s not get bogged down in details.

  This conveniently omits all the people who were doing nothing wrong, who broke no laws and still got shot. Just a small sampling:

  1. John Crawford, shot while holding a toy BB gun in a Walmart

  2. Akai Gurley, shot while walking in his own apartment building’s stairwell

  3. Tamir Rice, a child shot while playing outside in the park

  So, clearly, not everyone who gets shot is breaking the law. But if you are breaking the law, does that mean you should get shot? I guess it depends on which law you are breaking. Police apologists will cite the most extreme examples of this—people pointing guns at cops. Now, mind you, many of these cases are ones in which the only evidence of the gun being pointed at a cop is the cop’s testimony that it happened.

  But many police shootings don’t happen after guns are pointed. Let’s look at some laws that people broke that got them shot:

  1. A broken taillight—Philando Castile got shot after he got pulled over for a “broken taillight.”

  2. Missing front plate—Samuel DuBose got shot after being pulled over for a missing front plate.

  3. Not wearing a seat belt—Levar Jones got shot after being pulled over for not buckling up.

  4. Resisting arrest—Resisting arrest is like irritable bowel syndrome. Irritable bowel syndrome is this catch-all for when your butt hurts; maybe you should stop eating neon junk food, or maybe it’s some kind of problem with the bacteria in your gut. Nobody knows. But everybody knows your butt hurts. It’s the same with resisting arrest—nobody likes getting arrested, so everyone’s going to resist it somewhat. Police have wide latitude to decide if you are resisting arrest—it’s whatever they say it is.

  So, clearly breaking some of these laws shouldn’t be a capital offense. But given that almost any breaking of the law can be a capital offense for black people, I’m going to have to reiterate white advice on this one: don’t break the law.

  Don’t break any law. And I mean any law. Not speeding, not having a broken taillight, not even the law of attraction. Matter of fact, stay away from anything with “law” in it. Whatever has a law in it, don’t break it. The laws of nature, the laws of gravity—you ever seen a black astronaut? Not many. Because trust me, if it has law in it, it will just fuck you up.

  Don’t Reach for a Weapon

  “The term unarmed black man may be literally accurate, but it doesn’t tell the whole story in most cases. In a number of cases, if the victim ended up being unarmed, it was certainly not for a lack of trying.” —Tomi Lahren

  It’s common sense that if you pull a gun on a cop, they will shoot you. This is not hard to anticipate. Assuming you’re not some kind of violent criminal, why do people still do this? Well, some of the people who were killed reaching for their guns didn’t know that they were reaching for their guns.

  Some people “reaching for their guns” were getting their wallets out or scratching an itch, or who knows what. They didn’t mean to reach for their “gun”; they didn’t even have a gun! But cops don’t know that and are often looking for guns where there aren’t any. To a cop, anything “might” be a gun.

  Guns:

  Your wallet

  Your license and registration

  Your phone

  That book you were reading

  A candy bar

  Anything that feels “gun”-like in the dark, when you’re biased

  Don’t Reach

  So what to do if you are asked to reach for something? Don’t. Don’t reach. Declare yourself “not it.” Let the cop do the reaching.

  Even white girls know better nowadays. In Georgia, this cop pulled these two girls over. One was drunk. He was gonna take the other one to jail, so he says “Reach for your phone. You can use your phone to call somebody.” But she wouldn’t do it. She said that she didn’t want to reach for her cell phone because she had seen “way too many videos” of people getting shot by cops. You know shit’s bad when a white woman is scared of the police. Now either she’s really woke or she has fucked a lot of black guys. “Jamal told me this is how you’re supposed to act around cops. . . .”

  Anyway, then the cop joked, “But you’re not black. Remember, we only kill black people. Yeah. We only kill black people, right?” That cop was essentially forced to retire for telling a sarcastic joke, even though he was telling the truth. Isn’t it ironic: you basically get fired for joking about shooting a black man, but shooting a black man—that’s different.

  But this girl had the right idea—be careful what you reach for.

  The Problem with Pockets

  The trouble is, anywhere you might keep a gun is also a place you might keep a wallet or license. Pockets are convenient, but a safety hazard. Stop wearing stuff with pockets. Do you really need all that pocket change if you’re dead?

  Safe Bags

  So, no pockets. If you’re a man, maybe now is the time to buy one of those man purses so you don’t have pockets to dip into—a murse might save your life. If you’re a woman, maybe it’s time get yourself a tiny purse,
a clutch or something that doesn’t seem as easy to pack heat in.

  You know what I just realized? Bags are another problem. Guns can easily be stored in a backpack or a bag! Hell, movies always show some lady pulling a gun out of her purse. I don’t remember a gun being pulled out of a murse, but times are changing.

  Better Yet, Maybe Don’t Carry Anything

  You’re probably better off not carrying anything.

  “License and registration, please.”

  “Sorry, Officer, but I don’t carry that shit because I don’t like reaching for things and getting shot.”

  Don’t Reach for a “Weapon,” Either

  But let’s say you’re holding something or reaching for something that’s definitely not a weapon. It’s not a gun. It’s not a knife. It’s not a crossbow. It’s not a weapon. Be careful: that might be a weapon.

  A weapon is in the eye of the beholder. Think about some of the shit that people get fucked up with in some of those kick-ass kung fu movies: lunch trays, jump ropes, hot soup dumplings. Anything can be a weapon. Or think about James Bond: that guy has pens that shoot lasers and walking canes that are both an umbrella and a sword. That guy’s bow tie is a ninja star. So cops are rightfully concerned that anything can be weaponized.

  Better to not hold things. Holding things can be hazardous to your health.

  You Don’t Have a Gun . . . Yet

  And of course if you get shot and killed, you might come to find out that you did have a gun. Once the police investigate what happened, it might be that they find a gun. It’s incredible how often a gun is found after an investigation when previously there wasn’t any gun.

  In St. Louis, Officer Jason Stockley was acquitted of shooting Anthony Lamar Smith in 2011 after he said, “We’re killing this motherfucker.” Even though the judge let him off, the prosecution alleged that he put a gun in the car. A different cop on the scene had said that he didn’t see a gun and somehow this gun appeared after Stockley went back and forth to his car. Never mind that the gun didn’t have any of Smith’s DNA on it—it had only Stockley’s DNA—the judge ruled that it wasn’t plausible to believe that a dope dealer wouldn’t have a gun. So it’s not plausible to believe that there’s no way a dope dealer wouldn’t have a gun? This comes as a big surprise to pharmacists. Watch out, CVS.

  There are many, many cases where cops planted guns after the fact to justify a shooting. So even death won’t prevent you from getting shot for carrying a gun.

  Summary

  Don’t reach for a weapon. Or for anything: don’t reach for your license, don’t reach for the stars, your dreams, whatever. Stay away from it. Just remember:

  Anything can be a gun.

  Don’t carry anything.

  Don’t carry anything that can carry anything.

  Anything can be a weapon.

  Even if you follow these rules, you might have a “gun.” So it’s important to be vigilant even in death: don’t even carry a gun posthumously.

  Stuff White People Say

  Law & Order Fan #1: “But, DL: What about ‘black-on-black crime?’”

  pathdoc/Shutterstock

  Weirdly, “black-on-black” crime is a reason a lot of white people are scared of black people. Why are white people worried about black-on-black crime? Do you see “white” in that sentence? It doesn’t make sense.

  Except that if you keep hearing about “black-on-black” crime, it gives you an excuse to fear black people. Society parrots back to you that black people are inherently to be feared. After a police shooting, people say, “Well, it was a high-crime area.” They mean that this dude got shot because all the black people there must be dangerous.

  People like to point to a report that says 90 percent of black people who are murdered are murdered by other black people. But the same report also says that 83 percent of white people who are murdered are murdered by white people. Turns out that most people are murdered by people they know! Turns out that there’s no point in worrying about black-on-black crime, just like nobody’s worried about white-on-white crime. Crime is crime.

  To me, the idea of “black-on-black crime” is more dangerous to black people than the word “nigger” ever was. Because it’s a call to arms that basically says that we have this urgent situation. Black people are killing black people and we have to do something about it before anything else. It’s used as a tool for inaction and to discredit Black Lives Matter, as if Black Lives Matter is ignoring a problem that needs to be solved before we can even talk about police violence. You even have black people like Ray Lewis and Fox Sports’ Jason Whitlock toeing this line. Just because one bad thing is happening, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to solve another. Fox News is just using it as an excuse not to deal with police violence. It’s a way to paint all black people as violent, as if they deserve violence.

  It’s like if a bank got robbed all the time, right? The police can’t pull up and start pulling money from that bank just because it got robbed all the time. When the police break up a sex-trafficking ring, you can’t go, “Hey, this girl fucked a lot, so let’s fuck her again.” They can’t do that. But that makes sense when it’s black people? “These niggas are used to it.” Police violence against black people is okay because black people are already victims of violence?

  During the campaign, Trump kept talking about “Chicago” and how he was going to bring in the National Guard if they couldn’t solve their crime problem. Okay. So obviously, Chicago is a very violent city. But it’s also one of the cities with the highest unemployment rates for black men in the country (14.2 percent in 2016, according to the Economic Policy Institute, compared with 8.4 percent nationwide). The notion that you would tell people to put their guns down when they don’t have any opportunity or a job is absurd. Black-on-black crime is more about proximity than about any kind of particular moral failure. It’s about poor people with limited resources who can’t access education and jobs. And then you add in liquor stores and drugs and guns; it’s not really that difficult to ascertain what the outcome of that would be. Broke people kill broke people. People with no hope, with only despair; they kill a lot of people.

  So “Chicago” is just a code word. They didn’t say a fucking thing about Chicago when Laquan McDonald was shot by the police in 2014 and the police stonewalled the investigation for months. Why didn’t they want anyone to see the tapes? Because they shot a dude with a knife for no reason, that’s why. Eight fucking cops and they can’t disarm a guy with a knife in the middle of the highway?

  And when a police officer is frightened of a black guy, it means they are scared whether they had an experience with that black person or not. They can’t differentiate between a good guy and a bad guy. They’re scared of all black people because of something they saw on some TV screen about a shooting a thousand miles away. That to me is classic racism.

  So let’s face it: White people don’t care about violent crime in “Chicago.” They love violent crime in Chicago. They love it because it’s their favorite bogeyman: “black-on-black crime.”

  4

  You Have to Understand: Cops Are Scared

  “I fired my gun at Mr. Crutcher because I was fearing for my life.”

  —Officer Betty Jo Shelby, testifying why she shot Terence Crutcher

  In this, and so many other cases, an innocent black person gets shot because the cop is frightened. They have a scary job! They are put in a lot of weird situations and often have to deal with angry people. It’s not all giving old ladies directions or busting people for going 50 in a 45 zone.

  Being a cop can be dangerous. But it’s not always dangerous. Even the cops who aren’t white supremacists can misinterpret the threat at hand. And some are like Barney Fife, small men in a big uniform. Some have a serious case of the yips and are just one scary moment away from shooting someone.

  Juries are buying this narrative, too. Betty Jo Shelby was let off for killing Terence Crutcher because she was scared. Officer Jeronim
o Yanez was let off for killing Philando Castile because he was scared. Officer Timothy Loehmann was let off for killing Tamir Rice because he was scared.

  When you talk to white people, “being scared” is more than enough to excuse a cop shooting someone. Sure, they got a gun, a dog, and a helicopter. So if they’re afraid, I bet you’re fucking afraid, too. But now isn’t the time to worry about you being scared. I’m trying to get you not shot!

  What’s Scary About Black People?

  White people have always been scared of black people. And when a black person gets shot, there’s usually a sense from the commentary of white people that because the cop was scared, they deserved it. It doesn’t have to be something the victim specifically did to make them afraid at the time, because you have to understand there’s a historical fear. And so history lets the cop act with a heightened sense of danger when it comes to policing black people.

  1. Black People Live in “Bad” Neighborhoods Cops are scared because they are dealing with people in “bad” neighborhoods. This is one of the Right’s favorite dog whistles: emphasize “black-on-black” crime. So because of the racist housing policies that have segregated people of color into “bad neighborhoods,” anyone who lives in that neighborhood is “bad” and dangerous.

  2. Black People Are Strong! Take a look at how Officer Darren Wilson described Michael Brown in his grand jury testimony: “When I grabbed him the only way I can describe it is I felt like a five-year-old holding on to Hulk Hogan. Hulk Hogan, that’s how big he felt and how small I felt just from grasping his arm.”

  This fear of black people’s strength goes back at least to the bad old days of slavery. During the height of the lynching era, news stories were full of “black brutes” terrorizing white people. In the 1980s and ’90s, there were the stories of “superpredators” hopped up on crack and angel dust. Recently there was even a paper where researchers showed that white patients were more likely to receive painkillers than black patients; even doctors demonstrate unconscious bias and entrenched ideas about biological differences between races. Another study found that whites thought blacks were more likely to have superhuman abilities like enhanced strength and endurance. I’m serious!