After the rebellion in Ferguson, news about police brutality is now spreading across the country. The mainstream media is slowly beginning to cover the topic, which it had ignored for years. Meanwhile, encouraged by the strength of the movement, people are coming forward to tell their stories of police brutality, abuse of powers, and racism.
Ibeth Lopez, a young mother from Sacramento, California, is one of these people telling her story. Ibeth recently called a Liberation News writer after a terrifying run in with the police and requested that her experience be published. Ibeth believes that by telling our stories we can hold the police accountable and show that police brutality does exist and is a huge problem.
On Tuesday September 16th around 3 o’clock in the afternoon Ibeth was driving with her 4-month-old baby and boyfriend through the neighborhood of north Oak Park. They were on the way to buy groceries before her afternoon work shift.
Before they could get to the store and without any reasonable explanation other than racial profiling, a cop cruiser pulled behind them and began to tail them. Even though her car was registered, had insurance and was street legal and despite obeying all the traffic laws, suddenly the one cop car became four.
The police aggressively demanded over loud speaker that they turn off their car and exit the vehicle. As they began to arrest her boyfriend (on what turned out to be false charges) the young baby began to scream and cry.
Ibeth, being a good mother, wanted to help her baby. But as she turned a cop pointed a gun at her and demanded that she stop. As the baby continued to scream she pleaded with the police to let the baby out from the hot car. Angered by Ibeth’s determination, the cops escalated their intimidation and threats. Out of fear for her baby’s safety she consented and was detained then searched by the police.
Only in an extremely unjust society would an innocent, unarmed mother and baby be treated in such a cruel manner. Ibeth, a hard-working young woman putting herself through college, should have the right to live without fear of cops. Sadly though in the U.S. innocent people are terrorized this way each and every day.
This is why we must unite against police brutality. The police may act like they are above the law, but in reality if the people stand up we have the most power. Cops may think that they can treat people as less than human, but if the people fight back we can put all violent cops behind bars. The people can and will win: it’s only a matter of when. Now is the time to join the movement against police brutality!
