SHELBY COUNTY, Tenn. — Over the weekend, The FreeThought Project reported on an unprecedented move by Rhode Island police and National Guard going door to door to hunt down individuals seeking refuge from the COVID-19 outbreak in New York.
By Matt Agorist
This pandemic is quickly proving to be gasoline on the fire that is the police state. As we predicted in January, the authoritarian’s wet dream has arrived. The following video out of Tennessee illustrates how far police are willing to go to do the bidding of their bosses and lock you down.
The video, uploaded to Facebook on Sunday, shows a black woman walking down the street as a Shelby County Sheriff’s deputy is attempting to arrest her. The woman claims in the video that she is being arrested for refusing to give the cop her information. She tells the person filming that she was simply on a walk and this officer began to harass and eventually kidnap her.
If the officer did not have reasonable articulable suspicion that the woman had committed a crime or was about to commit a crime, she was well within her rights not to give him any information. Tennessee is not a stop and identify state, meaning cops cannot simply demand a citizen identify themselves arbitrarily.
Nevertheless, as the video shows, the officer is attempting to kidnap the woman who is in workout attire and claims she was just trying to go for a walk — a completely legal activity during the COVID-19 lockdown.
The woman does not attempt to hurt the officer or do anything to threaten him. She simply keeps walking. As she rounds the corner, multiple police SUVs pull up in the street and surround the woman.
As she continues to walk away, the officers tackle her and she tells them she is pregnant. The four cops — who happen to be white — then drag the pregnant woman to the SUV for allegedly “walking while black.”
As she screams to the officers that they are “racist pigs,” they tell her to “shut up!” She is then shoved into the back of the SUV and the doors slammed. Just before she goes silent, the woman asks why she is being arrested. The cops tell her nothing in response.
