The daughter of Eric Garner died.

In this case, we’re talking about skin color. But I get how it can be challenging to understand the plight of people not in our tribe. (Though it should be pursued.)

So here’s an example of police brutality against whites — by a white police officer. So it helps us know that police brutality by whites against blacks inevitably happens to blacks as well.

Perhaps it can be read with Eric Garner and her daughter, Erica, in mind. Garner famously said “I can’t breathe” in a video where he dies as police strangle him. Erica recently died of a heart attack.

Police officers confronted me at a northern Utah park. They had also called an ambulance — something even the doctor thought was absurd, with his excusing me from the hospital shortly after I got there. I was just playing at a playground with my daughter, her yelling “tunnel!” in excitement of her saying that portion of the playground.

And being at the hospital was the problem as it was. I knew that I did not need to go into the ambulance. At first, I stood my ground, saying that I was not constitutionally obligated to take the ambulance. Then the officer, Rolynn Snow, said that I must.

Police Officer Rolynn Snow (recofit.co)

I don’t see how Snow could have been knowingly telling anything but a lie. Surely he know that the police department would be legally and financially liable if, in a theoretical world, something negative physically happened to me before I arrived at the hospital.

Not to mention that I promised to drive myself to the hospital.

At that point, Snow abused me. He violently yelled at me, gesturing at me and threatening to arrest me if I didn’t get in the ambulance. That marked the first time that anything about arrest was ever said.

That meant that I had to start paying a monthly ambulance bill even though I had just $208 in my bank account. (I am still paying those fees.)

Snow later laughed at a colleague’s joking about equality.

Snow must have been floored by someone standing up to him, if even because it seems clear that he has a macho-man personality.

Laziness

You’ve got to wonder about how much police are currently overrated in general. Laziness comes to mind.

When I moved to Wyoming four months ago, four items from my apartment were stolen within the first week. I provided a lead. Officer Matthew Jones, who I coincidentally knew from a mission for the Mormon church that I learned not to affiliate with, dropped it merely going by the word of that suspect. Then I saw him again while covering a car crash at nearly 3 a.m. I told him that I had another suspect, having gone to the work of finding one for him by using my own investigative skills that I’ve learned in journalism. He said it would need to be a new case, so I called in about that.

Then I was told that the other officer never should have maintained the case as the same and that I would be getting a call. A week-and-a-half went by and I got nothing, so I called back. Nobody responded. Then nearly two weeks later, the police chief walked into the newsroom. I told him what was going on and he said he would be in touch with the officer. That was nearly another two weeks ago.

Then, in another city, I was threatened last month, being told “I’ll come after you.” In front of cops, on-scene. I had called for police after he had entered my personal space and slammed my laptop. The next business day, I followed up on a restraining order, sure that a report had been filed. Not only had one not been filed, but Sgt. Glen Williams argued why one shouldn’t have been.

A frame from the DC Comics White Knight series (DC Comics)

So then I called his chief and he said he would look at the camera of the incident. He said a report should have been filed and one would be, though I was still dismayed that he discouraged me from pursuing an order only on an assumption that the man who made the threat would file a lawsuit. For some reason.

(The man was mad that I was typing while a high school debate was taking place, as I was covering it for the newspaper for which I work.)

Of course, police brutality continues nationally. (DC Comics should be applauded for currently taking it on in its White Knight series.) That should be assumed. Also what should be looked into more is police laziness.