People are getting better at not accepting other coded police narratives that frame how we think about encounters. And yet there is a tendency to let police define an obvious proactive pretextual stop as a routine traffic-related one. https://twitter.com/sahrasulaiman/status/1381678848845045764

It matters. Pretextual stops are no-win situations for young men, and labeling them "traffic stops" compounds the problem.

For ex.: in the dashcam footage released after Kurt Reinhold, an unhoused Black man struggling with mental health issues, was killed during a "jaywalking" stop, we hear the officers debate whether or not the stop would actually hold up. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-02-18/orange-county-deputies-argued-priorr-to-shooting-black-man

One of the officers finally ends the argument by saying, "We need to identify him, no?" Making the interaction about addressing Reinhold's presence rather than his jaywalking on a relatively empty street raises the stakes & escalates the engagement before it even formally began.

Yet assessments of these stops tend to be framed as if the person is being noncompliant w/ the pretext -unwilling to take responsibility for the jaywalking or the double parking or the air fresheners- rather than responding to their perception of the il/legitimacy of the pretext.

Travis Elster's case is a perfect example of this. He ran from a stop, just like #DaunteWright tried to. Thankfully, he survived. https://la.streetsblog.org/2021/03/17/officer-fires-8-wildly-out-of-policy-shots-at-man-fleeing-pretextual-stop-evolving-lapd-statements-attempt-to-pin-blame-on-driver/

Elster was idling double parked outside a fast food restaurant. He knows why he is being stopped. The s immediately escalate the engagement by putting their hand in the , blocking his passage (instead of just asking him to move along), and telling him to turn off the engine.

He tests them...offers to park around the corner. But the officer is not having it. That's when Elster knows for sure that he's going to be subjected to a warrant/parole/probation check and a search.

Elster doesn't want any problems but he also doesn't want to be tripped up and have his life disrupted over what he feels is some bullsh*t. So he slowly maneuvers as far to the left as he can around officer Tovar and exits the lot. His hands remain on the wheel the whole time.

You can see how hard he worked to get around the officer that was standing in front of him. He had been parallel to and some distance from the patrol car (1st two fotos). He is well into the patrol car's lane by the time he exits the lot.

Because it's evident from the bodycam footage that Elster didn't try to run the officer down, they're now trying to justify Tovar firing 8 shots at him by saying Elster raised his arm toward Tovar. That, of course, is untrue.

But they need to justify firing eight wild shots into a Church's Chicken's parking lot and a crowded Manchester Ave at rush hour.

Elster is now in jail, being held up at Pitchess in Castaic with no bail, possibly looking at being charged with assault with a deadly weapon - a strike offense that could cost him up to ten thousand dollars in fines and three to five years in prison.

And yet the alternative didn't look much better to him... He's a 30yo man that lost his father to the streets when he was young & who has been thru a lot. He knew he was going to get f*cked over either way. Most men I've intvwd tell me they think about running b/c they can't win.

It's because of the stakes a pretextual stop sets up. And it matters because just getting armed enforcement out of traffic stops won't necessarily address that issue.

LASD is not contracted to do traffic enforcement in Westmont, for ex., but that didn't stop them from chasing down & killing Dijon Kizzee and blaming him for running from a pretextual stop LASD continues to claim was about a bike traffic violation. https://twitter.com/sahrasulaiman/status/1308528646232051712

Thanks for reading. I'll have this written up into a more coherent article/argument tomorrow. In the meanwhile. Peace to #DaunteWright and his family.