In the American police state, sitting on your own porch in broad daylight, doing nothing untoward, could still earn a punch in the face and tackling to the ground by an ignorant, rogue cop — even if you're fully compliant and respectful.
Dejuan Yourse found that out the hard way on June 17, when he waited for his mom to meet him at the Greensboro, North Carolina, house he'd intermittently shared with her for years. Because he did not have a current key to the home, Yourse's mother told him to relax on the porch until she arrived.
Officer Travis Cole and an as-yet unidentified female officer, however, pulled up before she got there, and proceeded to harass, intimidate, insult, and ultimately brutalize Yourse — on his own front porch — for literally no reason.
Body camera
footage revealed the male officer's unjustified
"disturbing" excessive force, and — although far too many similar incidents go unpunished — this time, video led to some semblance of justice.
Although the encounter begins cordially enough — the officers politely ask basic investigatory questions after being summoned to the scene by someone unfamiliar with Yourse who had
assumed it was a case of breaking and entering — the tension escalates quickly, thanks to Cole's assumption the man must be lying. Were it not for the costumes and badges of the police, the startling
encounter would constitute pure thuggery.
Comment:
Update: One of the children shot, a 6yo boy named Jacob Hall, is reportedly clinging to life due to major blood loss from the bullet hitting an artery. A friend of the child's family reports he is on life support and that "he died twice, and was revived, during medical transport and again during surgery."