Photo via @davenewworld_2/Twitter
April 16, 2021, 10:29 am
Much of the public is calling out the stark differences between the way Black people are treated in Minnesota and the way a white man was arrested unharmed after hitting a cop with a hammer and driving off with him hanging out of his truck window.
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Video footage caught by an onlooker shows a white pickup truck attempting to flee two police cruisers that have him blocked in before he manages to get himself loose and speeds away, dragging the officer along with him out of view.
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Though it remains unclear exactly what happened after the video ends, the Hutchinson Police Department reported that the suspect, Luke Alvin Oeltjenbruns, was taken into custody without being shot and that the officer is in stable condition.
According to TheGrio, police were called on Oeltjenbruns after he assaulted a home improvement store employee with a piece of lumber after being confronted for refusing to wear a mask. He then fled the scene but was spotted by an officer in a nearby parking lot, and is now being charged with first-degree assault with great bodily harm.
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The results of all this are being compared to two recent high-profile police killings in which a young Black man and a child of color were both shot to death by police after attempting to flee.
Daunte Wright, 20, was killed when Kim Potter shot him after shouting “taser” multiple times, though many doubt the claims that she confused her gun for this rather different device. Adam Toledo, 13, was shot and killed by police after putting his empty hands in the air as ordered following a chase down an alley.
The question of why police manage to take highly violent white suspects into custody alive while killing complying people of color, particularly Black men and teenagers, has been posed time and time again as the problem of police brutality continues unabated in the U.S. Attorney Ben Crump posted another video of a white man resisting arrest, hitting two cops with their own baton, then getting up and hijacking their police vehicle. Neither officer even threatened him with a taser, let alone shot him.
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Though police do kill white people (who are often disabled and/or having a mental health crisis) in the U.S., footage like this shows that it doesn’t have to be that way. Police are very rarely killed by suspects, much more often dying in traffic accidents, as is the case with any job where you have to drive around a lot.
The killings of Wright, Daunte, and others in the past month alone have renewed calls for defunding police on a national scale as the brutality continues despite reform attempts.
*First Published: April 16, 2021, 10:29 am
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