Virginia Dotson is an 84-year-old black American woman who was violently thrown to the ground by the police outside a Walmart near Columbus, Ohio on August 1st 2009. She was thrown down so hard she was bleeding from her head.
Dotson did have a steak knife, but she also had a cane and did not seem to be an immediate threat: people passed right by her. Onlookers were more upset by how the police acted than by Dotson herself – so much so that four more police cars had to be called in to keep things under control.
One of the onlookers recorded it on his mobile phone and posted it on YouTube (video to follow).
Dotson’s daughter had left her in the car while she ran into Walmart to buy some things. She was taking a chance because Dotson has Alzheimer’s: her memory is failing so she does not always understand what is going on. Her daughter thought she would be safe, though, because she did not know how to take off her seat belt.
Dotson saw a steak knife in the car and cut herself free, cutting herself in the process. Dotson left the car to look for her daughter. She was bleeding with knife in hand! Some children approached her and it seems she threatened them.
By the time the police arrived people seemed calm, though Dotson still had a knife in her hand.
Officer Tammy Scott, a white woman, came towards her and asked her to drop the knife. Dotson would not. So Scott took her by the arm and violently threw her to the ground and then got the knife out of her hand. But she threw Dotson down so hard that onlookers were shocked and began to gather. They were afraid the police were going to hurt her even more.
It seemed like they cracked her head since she was bleeding from there. But she was not knocked out, though she did need stitches later. Her wrist may have been broken too.
This took place a few weeks after the police went overboard against another older black person with a cane: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
But unlike the Gates thing, this case got very little press. According to Google News a week after the event there were only four news stories on it. While it did make a top newspaper in Britain (Daily Mail) and a top blog in America (Gawker), it was not picked up by AP, CNN, the New York Times or any large news outfit in America.
Why is that? Is this acceptable behaviour by the police? Are black people so threatening to white people that they see nothing wrong in this? Or is it because Dotson is black and so the whole affair does not matter to the white people who make the big decisions about what gets reported nationwide as news? You know, the same people who like to report on missing white women.
See also:
Oh my goodness, that’s terrible! All that really was NOT necessary, especially considering her age. If that had happened to someone in her 20s or 30s, I honestly would understand, but not in this case since it’s a woman who LOOKS like she’s at least 70. If I came in contact with a very elderly person who refuses to drop their weapon, I would probably make the assumption that the individual may have some form of dementia and not think that s/he is trying to hurt anyone. This is awful.
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the scary reality of this is, if you are a black woman, who is abused by police, the chances of it getting reported by the news is even slimmer than a black man being abused by the police.
i said in a different post, that the news prefer to show black men, because stereotypically black men are seen as a threat, and the news nowadays plays off emotions. rather than tell the entire story, they will tell enough to make it look like the victim was at fault.
a black woman and a black female child, would only prove to people that police really do abuse their power and that blacks really are harassed by cops just because of their skin color.
type in black women beaten by the police.
its shocking just how many have happened, one blog even listed a few.
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The great majority of those shot by the police are black – for the simple reason that street-level crime is overwhelmingly committed by blacks. Until the black crime rate is brought down, all police activity – stops, arrests, life-saving assistance to crime victims and the rare officer shooting – will fall disproportionately on blacks as well. But even if you care only about the criminal part of the minority population, the best way to decrease the number who are shot by the police each year is to bring down the minority crime rate.
Instead, the cop-attack industry, including most of the media, relentlessly tells cops: You are a racist, you are a scourge on the black community. At some point, police officers may decide the fight isn’t worth the candle – and stop working so diligently to protect law-abiding minority people. And it will be hard to blame them.
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how are the police protecting minorities when they are targeting any minority for a crime.
it doesnt matter if one group of race commits most crimes, that doesnt justify singling out people just because they have the same race as someone who did bad.
blacks are individuals too. and cops dont treat blacks like individuals. they assume they are all the same.
and as abagond said in a differnt blog, the police are not here to serve and protect black people.
they are the gestapo.
end of story.
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My heart and prayers go out to the Dotson family. That policeman needs to go to jail and serve time. I’m getting sick and tired of moralists and hypocrites like David who don’t give a darn about Black crime when it involves Blacks, but when it involves their ethnic group, they’re the ones who make loud noises.
The police can and does abuse their power against women, poor, and Blacks all the time. Let’s not be in denial of this.
La Reyna
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David:
There is no way a higher black crime rate can excuse what they did to Viriginia Dotson. That is just sick – and plain racist. She is an old, confused woman, not a dangerous killer.
Maybe if the police learned to respect black people and respect the law they would have an easier time keeping law and order and bringing the crime rate down. They destroy the respect they should have and need to have as authority figures by stuff like this. And this is hardly the worst of it, not by a long shot.
The police bring their bad name onto themselves, it is not the creation of a “cop-attack industry”.
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Womanist Musings has a good post on police violence against black women:
http://www.womanist-musings.com/2009/03/black-women-get-beat-by-police-too.html
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What a shame! I hope the elderly lady is okay.
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Abagond, this is not sick. The old lady had a knife. When somebody is coming at you with a knife you have to make a split decision. Stop blaming cops and start blaming black thugs. If there were not cops in the Black community the crime rate would my even worse than it already is. Maybe if Black people learned to respect the police and the law they would not have these encounters.
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David,
Blaming Black folks as usual. I’m so sick of moralists like you telling us to clean up our act when y’all don’t have it together.
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David,
Go to the projects. Say “Blame black thugs”. And I’ll see where you are tomorrow.
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David said:
Abagond, this is not sick. The old lady had a knife. When somebody is coming at you with a knife you have to make a split decision.
Come on, shoppers were passing right by her. She was not an immediate danger to anyone. The police overreacted, like they do all too often with black suspects. Maybe because they apply the same racist thinking you do to blacks: because some blacks are dangerous, they must all be presumed dangerous.
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Hi. My name is Cherise Folkes and I am from Global Entertainment Network. We have a radio show titled Simply the Law which will debut early September, 2009. We came across your story about Virginia Dotson and would like to know if you have her contact information. We would love to have her on the show. I do not want to go into too much detail. But if you could e-mail I would greatly appreciate it.
I will be able to proved more details in the e-mail.
Cherise
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Folkesc@gmail.com
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Cops are assholes. Not all, but some, and the ones who are can inflict a lot of damage. Here is another story of police abusing an older person that got virtually no press.
http://www.trib.com/articles/2009/08/11/homepage_lead/doc4a816fb93e5ef853922200.txt
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Watch the video again, David. The lady was NOT “coming at (the police) with a knife.” She was standing there confused. As a social worker of 30 years who has worked with many populations including violent folks, I did not see a violent person standing there. Yes, the knife was a potential threat. But I have faced mentally ill folks with edged weapons who were waving them and threatening me, and I talked them down. In a case like this where the woman was calm, standing back and talking her into putting the knife down would have been the logical thing to do. There was no need to use the joint lock at that point and the throw should never have been used on a person so elderly. I know of cases where elderly individuals have died from falls.
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I watched the video for the first time last night and what leapt out to me was something that I’ve not seen anybody mention here: the cop involved in the confrontation, who committed the brutal throw, was a female.
This is a textbook example in support of the argument made by many that female police officers should not be assigned to street patrol. I have a colleague who handles police misconduct cases almost exclusively. There is a lot of data to support the thesis that, since females in general are not as physically strong as men, they resort to deadly or excessive force more quickly and more often. Also, to counteract the appearance of weakness compared to men, female beat cops tend to adopt an exaggerated hyper-aggressive approach to their dealings with the general public, which tends to escalate confrontations.
Both of these are on display here. It is not at all unreasonable to assume that if the cop who confronted the old woman was a man, he would have very easily disarmed her without incident. I’m aware that the lady threatened a little kid with the knife and was ranting and waiving it around in a threatening manner, but c’mon, she was obviously a frail old woman. Any man would have had no hesitation putting her in a hug and taking the knife without further ado.
Instead, it was a woman who confronted her, and a diminutive woman at that. So what did she do? She got all jiu-jitsu and flipped the poor old lady to the ground. It was utterly un-called for and plainly excessive.
I’m aware of the counter argument in favor of female beat cops — that the presence of a woman is often a calming influence, especially on men in domestic violence situations, which ultimately means that deadly force will be needed less often. From my lunchtime chats with my colleague, though, this doesn’t often prove to be the case in the real world.
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[…] Source: https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/virginia-dotson/ […]
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Blanc2 and Mike: good points: Officer Scott’s sex probably played a part and old people can die from falls more easily than young people.
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It is unbelievable and sadly true that this type of agression and disrespect happens still in 2009. Obviously the officer went overboard in her perception of “protect & serve”. Why is it that we as a Black Community have to find a reason why we should be treated with dignity and respect as other races. Will there ever come a day when we are just looked at as citizens, regardless of color? I have seen and lived with this all my life…and unless you are a minority, especially an African American, you will have no concept of what we have to deal with daily regarding authority, regardless, we are always assumed to be in the wrong. My prayers go out to the Dotson family and to the officer(s) involved, plus I believe additonal training is needed for officers to defuse “some” matters without advancing to agressive tactics that cause more harm than good. I also agree not all officers, as well as all black americans are out to commit crimes, some are actually innocent.
Peace!
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Not surprising, although I wonder how that female policewoman ever got on the force???
Surely she need more training.
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This is not only not surprising; it is the norm for white supremacist Amerikkka. The cops are the first line of occupation for Afrikans in Amerikka. Black people must somehow escape from and permanently separate from the Aryan beast. There is no alternative, nor is there any hope for an alternative.
The beast is untrainable and uneducable when it comes to Black people. The female is no different than the male. Neither is the beast sick. It is being its natural self. The sick ones are the Blacks who think the nature of the beast can be changed by training or educating in some kind of cultural sensitivity. You cannot reach the innate beastality of this sub-human being.
Time after time, lesson after lesson, the evidence confronts us. Yet we are repeatedly alarmed, shocked, astonished, etc. David Walker told us they are our “natural enemy.” That is, it is in their inherent nature to be our enemy.
When a critical mass of us realize the above truth we will then be ready for the resolution. It will involve both the visible and invisible forces of nature. When the student (Black critical mass) is ready the teacher (Divine mind) will appear.
Until then many more will suffer and die.
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As a former Chicago police officer that worked 10-99, alone in a squad car, in two of the highest crime districts in the city, find this situation with the elderly woman to be totally unacceptable.
Officers are trained to access each situation based on the merits of the circumstances. Officers are trained to subdue violent offenders without harming the offender. Harming an offender is only acceptable when all due diligence was taken and the harm was unavoidable during the course of action.
If I sound like a lawyer, I am not. I’m just a Black woman from Chicago that followed the ‘accepted standards of law enforcement’.
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This sickens me, as it should sicken everyone who sees it. Look at the way the elderly woman was holding the knife. What kind of police training teaches that her actions and posture are threatening?
It is obvious from her movements that she is confused and frightened. Did the police even ask her if she needed help? I could hear a lot of what was recorded, but I didn’t hear any words from the police that expressed any concern for the woman until after they rough-handled her. Would you want your grandmother treated as they treated her?
Re-think your actions officers, learn to better identify a truly dangerous situation, and treat the next confused elderly person you find with some respect and basic kindness. You should be ashamed of yourselves. And you need to offer a sincere apology to her.
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Probably that was the “bravest” thing this police bitch has ever done. Sometimes i just wonder if people working on positions requiring much responsibility such as public functionaries, use their brains for any more complicated problems than to eat or not to eat a donut.
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And folks wonder way law enforcement officers are not respected as a whole or as an individual. Because of cases like this.. These cases are not drops in the buckets as they claim.. I would demand CNN or any mainstream media take on this story with follow ups. This is a REAL ISSUE for Blacks and Latinos. Bill Gates should not receive the attention because of him being Mr. Gates but because the officer was WRONG same as this case. Racial Tension in America will always be as long as we have folks like those officers in places of power misusing it and other fearing Blacks and Latinos as if they are those stereotypes they created many years ago are true. Yes, many folks still believe those myths (lies) This needs to be forward to the mainstream media..
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russell, you are 100% right on everything you said. i have been trying to tell abagond the exact same thing that you said in your post. but he likes to flip flop about white people. one minute they are kind loving people here on planet earth, next minute they are low down dirty devils. what will it take for black people to wake up like you and realize this is a beast that we are dealing with?
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White people are humans, the same as blacks. That means they are capable of great love and great evil. Hitler was white, but so was Mother Theresa. It is part of the human condition.
White power has affected them in some bad ways, hardened their hearts and blinded them to much of the evil that they do, but black people would have been pretty much the same.
More here:
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Jasmine ;
You ask what will it take to bring consciousness to Black. In response I will make three or four points. First, we must understand and acknowledge that not all of us will wake up. In fact, and this is most distressing, my estiimate is that between only one fourth to one third will ever wake up. But that is more than enough to do the job !
The fact is that most of our people LOVE the oppressor. Most of us have been so thoroughly brain-washed by slavery, segregation, miseducation, media madness, hollywood imagery, false religion and what Amos Wilson calls the falsification of Afrikan consciousness that we will never depart form him.
Secondly, most Black folk resist the truth and will fight you tooth and nail if you persist in bringing it to them. With direction and funding by their Zionist masters,negro integrationist organizations lead in the destructive war against African-centeredness, cultural consciousness and self-determination.
Third, blind, ignorant and deceived Black people like Abagond and other “Can we just get along” Blacks are constantly in the way, with their confused and blind stumblings.
They have been deceived by the “To be equal” propaganda bought and paid for by the enemy. They do not realize that to be equal is for the divine human to voluntarily lower himself or herself to a beastial state. We must never compromise our godliness, our divine humanity, our dignity by stooping to such degradation. How could we ever expect the divine and ancestral intervention that awaits our awakening if we continue to lower ourselves to the state of the enemy? This is really an insult to ourselves and our ancestors.
Lastly, in response to what it will take, it will take education as in the meaning of “know thyself.” Unfortunately, it will take a continuation of oppression by the enemy until we realize and accept the absolute hopelessness of justice from the enemy. And finally, it will take a critical mass of conscious Afrikan people who know who we are and accept our role as caretakers responsible for control of this planet. We will then be ready for the physical and spiritual involvement of the deities and the ancestors. They will then joyfully say, “Well its about time. We’ve been ready and waiting. What took y’all so long?”
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thank you for responding russell. you are so on point. did you read abagonds response to me? doesnt he know there was a time on earth when we DID live under black supremacy and we didnt lift a finger to harm any other group or race of people. we even helped the white folks come out of the caves. black people sailed over here to this part of the world (the olmac heads in mexico are the proof we we visited this part of the world) and didnt decide to steal the land or run over the peaceful indians because we could. why does he keep comparing black people to white people? he keeps saying if we had the chance we would be evil like white people and do dirt like white people. but history has shown that we had the opportunity but didnt do it! and he keeps missing the main part, he says white supremacy makes white people bad, BUT IF THEY HAD ANY GOODNESS IN THEM THERE WOULDNT BE ANY WHITE SUPREMACY!! duh.
i sure appreciate you being a conscious black man russell, so intelligent and full of knowledge. please keep dropping knowledge on this site.
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THIS IS ABSOLUTELY ABSURD!!!!! How in the hell does this officer think that it was okay to force this woman to the ground in that manner. How the hell would she feel if that were her mother????? This woman needs to compensated for her medical bills caused by the brutal force (that was UNNECESSARY) of this “trained” police officer. This family needs to SUE!!!!!!! I AM COMPLETELY OUTRAGED!!!!!!!
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I also work with elderly patients with dementia. I doubt the police could have convinced Ms. Dotson to put down the knife b/c people with advanced dementia do not process communication like you and I. She doesn’t know what they are talking about when they ask her to put down the knife. The police should have been trained in less violent methods of disarming a person, especially mentally ill or demented persons. Police can’t know everything but this was preventable.
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Right, you would think this would be part of their training.
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If it weren’t for camera phones with videos who knows how many cases of police brutality would just be swept under the rug. I heard about this situation on youtube of all places, not the news.
I think many whites still see us as less than human, so it’s kind of justified to treat us this way. If it were a white woman this situation would have NEVER went down like that.
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Im seriously starting to hate white people
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I am speechless, disgusted and terrified.
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black cop during a white women like that his _ _ _ would be in jail i cannot even begin to think this is still happening to our older black elder women.
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disrespect period
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The police department was pleased to see the independent video coverage of the episode because it confirmed the situation was handled properly.
Meanwhile:
“Dotson’s daughter had left her in the car while she ran into Walmart to buy some things. She was taking a chance because Dotson has Alzheimer’s: her memory is failing so she does not always understand what is going on. Her daughter thought she would be safe, though, because she did not know how to take off her seat belt.”
In other words, the daughter is the person responsible for the problem. The daughter’s bad decision about leaving the old woman in the car alone was the start.
If it is wrong to leave young children in a locked car, it is equally wrong and even more foolish to leave an old Alzheimer’s patient locked in a car.
As everyone with even a little experience with Alzheimer’s patients knows, when unattended, they behave exactly as this old woman behaved.
Moreover, she was carrying a knife and showing signs of being an Emotionally Disturbed Person. The fact that she is old would not have stopped her from stabbing someone who might have tried to be helpful.
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I remember this it was disgusting, I agree with the guy recording it how would you like if if somebody did that to your mother. And people wonder why black people are weary of the police. There was also the incident where this white male police officer beat up a 15 year old black girl becasue he told her to take of her shoes and she kicked them off and they barely touched him. But he used it as a excuse to beat up a black girl
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Wow mistreating and abusing the elderly is not cool. If the lady had been white they would have handled this situation better than this. Tackling a old lady with a cane to the ground and busting her head open should result in disciplinary actions and a lawsuit. Im really beginning to hate white people.
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Ive never trusted the police but this is a new low for whites and the police.
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@Leaveumthinking –
don’t jump on to the one size fits all “hate sponsored” bandwagon…
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When I see or hear about injustice like this it makes me very upset. But youre right I should never hate. Thats something that Im going to work on.
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Leaveumthinking:
Know who you enemy is. Some persons are your natural enemy, similar the relationship between the wolf and the lamb. Those who have enslaved, exploited, oppressed, murdered, raped and imprisoned and your people from the first encounter up to and including the present moment are your “natural enemies” (David Walker, p xviii). You are wise to hate them. Do you think God loves Satan? There is a time and place for everythjing, a time to love and a time to hate. It is just, proper, right and reasonable to hate your enemy!
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@ Russ
Do you believe that whites are blacks natural enemies and why?
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@Russ
I think I worded that question wrong. First let me say I agree with you about the abuse, murders, rapes and oppression blacks have faced at the hands of whites. One example is how they mistreated and injured Ms Dotson.
But when you say they are our “natural” enemies do you mean at birth without a choice or they are our enemies because of the things they have done to blacks?
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I don’t agree that this is a racial issue. It’s more an issue of criminal police who like nothing better than to abuse the people they are sworn to protect.
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Wow, russ, jas and mr. Universal leaveum, like the contrast in opinion. Although leaveum , russ point is ether extreme. Yet it is truth on the bais of historical and cyclical principles for the future of humanity. European descendants deny to their detriment the psychological, spiritual and physical impacts of slavery on the world. The massive amounts of negative spiritual energy from natives, blacks, Asians killed, tortured, raped ect during their demonic campaign of global dominance. Your all intelligent in points and perspectives, yet the solutions are the mechanism for comments and debates. As intellectuals debating the validity of a problem wastes precious time devising solution oriented paths for prosperity not progress.
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