Once again the unblinking eye of the cell phone camera has captured the aggressive behavior of a police officer against a pretty much defenseless black male. According to reports, police were called a Warsaw, North Carolina Waffle House. 22-year-old Anthony Wall, who had escorted his sister to her senior prom, got into a disagreement with servers and one of them hit the panic alarm.
At such an establishment, panic alarms are in place to summon the police when danger is imminent to employees or customers. However, being a black male often means people will overreact to you. The video, which has gone viral, picks up with a large officer grabbing Wall by the neck.
The Rodney King Beating and The Cycle of Black Pain
This morning, I looked out the window and noticed that it is a particularly sunny day. I glanced through social media and noticed that there’s but the slightest mention of Rodney King or that tragic day that rocked the world.
Naturally, Wall resists. Why? Because there’s a hand around his throat. It’s not even a matter of morals or law, but of fight and flight. A violent motion by any lifeform toward another will automatically elicit one response or another. If someone has their hands on your windpipe there’s no time to think about restraint or respect for the law. One simply wants the aggressor to stop choking him. I struggle to understand why a reaction that’s native to every creature on this planet is deemed criminal.
CNN on Twitter
Police are investigating an incident after video surfaced of an officer choking a man outside of a Waffle House in North Carolina https://t.co/TWZFmCYrrg https://t.co/VH96AfJbEl
I was pretty much trying to scream for air and trying to breathe because he was holding my throat, and thats when I got aggressive with him because you are choking me, Wall told WTVD. Wall did accept responsibility for the argument with the employees, but he does not feel that the officer was justified in using the force he used.
However, according to Warsaw Police Chief Eric Southerland, the problem is that people are blowing the situation out of proportion via social media. But what weapon do the constantly accosted have when police nationwide are literally getting away with murder?
I was pretty much trying to scream for air and trying to breathe because he was holding my throat, and thats when I got aggressive with him because you are choking me, Wall told WTVD. Wall did accept responsibility for the argument with the employees but feels force was not necessary.
