A Wisconsin television news station uncovered more footage from the Milwaukee Police Department’s controversial arrest of Milwaukee Bucks rookie Sterling Brown this past January, and it does no favors for the half-dozen officers currently defending themselves against accusations of racism and brutality.
In other words, while a white police officer was brutalizing a black man, his fellow officers were plotting their defense against racism, all while they wanted overtime for this police work. This is disgusting. It is vile. And it captures everything that is broken with a system that former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was trying to warn us about by kneeling more than a year ago.
‘You’re stepping on my ankle’
In one two-minute clip posted by WISN-TV, an officer is seen stepping on Brown’s ankle after he was Tased and tackled, while another presses his cheek firmly into the Walgreens parking lot pavement.
“You’re stepping on my ankle, for what?” asked Brown, whose ankles are his livelihood.
“So you don’t kick us,” the officer said.
“I ain’t got no reason to kick y’all, man,” added Brown. He made no attempts to kick the officers.
That’s when another officer asked, “Are you a Bucks player, man?”
‘Are you a Bucks player, man?’
And that’s the moment you know just how horrible their actions are, because that’s the moment they start to realize that they might not be able to get away with the same brutality they can with someone who doesn’t play for the Bucks, someone who wouldn’t have the same mouthpiece as an NBA player.
We know this because another WISN-TV video showed this exchange between three officers:
“The bureau is coming out for this?”
“We’re trying to protect ourselves.”
“Because he’s a Bucks player?”
“Because he plays for the Bucks, if he makes a complaint, it’s going to be a [expletive] media firestorm.”
“Oh yeah.”
“And then any little [expletive] thing that goes wrong is going to be, ‘Ooh, the Milwaukee Police Department is all racist … blah, blah, blah.'”
Two things we learned from this exchange: 1) These officers do not believe the bureau would be concerned with their behavior if Brown was a black man who did not happen to play for the Bucks, and 2) If you’re a police officer who is trying to protect yourself from the bureau coming out to question you about racism, you’re probably being racist. Again, this is sickening footage to watch.
‘Taser, Taser, Taser’
Somehow, it gets worse.
After a handful of officers Tased Brown, tackled him to the ground and stepped on his ankle for illegally parking in an empty Walgreen’s parking lot around 2 a.m. on Jan. 26, one of the officers wanted to make sure he was getting paid extra for this excessive force, so he called from his car.
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