A Georgia state law enforcement officer was commended for following procedure during a routine traffic stop that nearly turned tragic earlier this week.
Deputy Jason Hancock continued police department tradition of shooting unarmed black men, but nearly forgot to do so.
The driver, 26 year old Amir Johnson, was stopped for an aggressive paint job on his Toyota Corolla that depicted a clashing two-tone black and white paint job.
'I saw the black and white on the vehicle and knew that something was wrong. Those colors should never go together. Call it intuition or whatever you want, but something didn't seem right.'
After approaching the vehicle, Deputy Hancock noticed the strong smell of fish coming from the vehicle.
'I noticed that the suspect had a grocery bag with fish in the back seat. Although he provided a receipt showing that he had made the purchase, the blacks don't generally eat fish, so I assumed that the receipt was a fake and asked him to step out of his vehicle. The driver did so and was arrested for suspicion of theft while black.'
After placing Johnson into the police cruiser and turning on his recently purchased Toby Keith album, a unnerving sense overcome Hancock.
'Something didn't feel right. I went through everything in my head, went back and checked the suspect's vehicle again, planted a few grams of crack under his seat and returned to my vehicle. After buckling up, it hit me.'
That's when the deputy click drew his weapon, turned, and fired at the unarmed and cuffed Johnson, hitting him twice in the leg.
'This why we go through 2 hours of training every single decade. Had I forgotten to shoot the unarmed black man, this all would have been for not. One of my cop buddies recently forgot to shoot an unarmed light-skinned black man because he wasn't sure if he was black or not. Thought maybe he was Puerto Rican. The guy lost his job. You can't take any chances in this line of work. It's dangerous out there.'
Amir Johnson was transported to the local jail where he was booked on charges of theft, resisting arrest, and being black. He's still awaiting medical treatment.
'Once they find that crack, he'll spend a few years in prison. I'm just glad that I was able to take another dangerous unarmed black man off of the street. We're cleaning this place up.'
