Last Wednesday, a video was posted to Facebook that showed a black male driver putting a police officer on blast for allegedly drawing his gun during a routine traffic stop. According to the man, the police officer in the background of the video approached the man's car with his service pistol out after pulling him over for missing a turn signal. After that...well, we'll just let the man speak for himself. You can watch the full rant up top.
"You pointed your gun at me—do you feel empowered?" the man asks the cop, who does nothing more than nod and say "okay" throughout the video. "You see what the fuck going on on TV?" the man continues. "A turn signal not made is a big enough of a crime for you to feel like you need to take out your service pistol, right? Right? Big fucking crime."
The man levels with the cop and tells him that if he had just come to the car sans weapon and done his normal routine, there would have been no problems. But instead: "I turn around to a fucking gun pointed in my face!"
"Good cops get fucked-up raps because of people like you," the driver says. "You picked a dangerous fucking job and I respect that. But my G—drawing a fucking gun? That's where I lose the respect. The respect is out of the fucking window. You drew a fucking gun on me for a fucking turn signal...I'm quite sure there's proper training to where you don't have to draw your gun and you can still be safe."
In the video caption posted to Facebook, the man mentions Michael Bennett, defensive end for the Seattle Seahawks, who just last week claimed he was a victim of racial profiling in Las Vegas.
The video was quickly ripped and shared to Twitter, where it went viral. Viewers weighed in on the cop's alleged lack of thinking and the man's bravery to speak out in a potentially dangerous situation:
On the bright side, at least the man walked away from this situation. Unfortunately, that's not the way things have gone down lately in this country.