Leopards Ate Face is a series featuring conservatives suffering the consequences of their own ideology. The term comes from this iconic tweet:
Today we head to New Mexico, where a “back the blue” white family is outraged they were treated the same way communities of color are treated every single day.
A white family is outraged at the treatment they got from police as they were trying to save their dog, who had just been hit by a speeding car.
Tara Albrecht, her husband William, and her teenage son loaded the injured dog into their car and sped to the nearest veterinarian emergency room. On the way, they sped past a Bernalillo, New Mexico, police cruiser. KRQE reports:
“I imagined if he was going to pull me over for speeding, I’d pull over. He’d say something to me and then maybe even help us get there. You know, I’ve heard of stories like that before, but that didn’t happen.”
Police video from the officer’s lapel footage shows what actually happened. Officer Jeramie Nevarez is seen pointing his gun at Albrecht as he shouts, “Driver, step out of the vehicle!”
The officer continues shouting commands at Albrecht, who has his hands in the air. “Face the f— away from me!” The officer shouts. Lapel video shows Officer Nevarez ordering Albrecht out of the car at gunpoint, and telling him to walk backward toward traffic.
“Step back! Step f—–g back! Go to your left!” Officer Nevarez is shouting, as cars pass by them on the busy road. “My dog’s gonna die!” Albrecht tries to explain to the officer, who doesn’t approach the family’s vehicle.
The situation continued to deteriorate, with William forced to kneel in the street with a gun pointed at his head. Additional squad cars showed up. “I saw my son was sticking his hands out the window, too, like, dude, our dog’s going to die,” Albrecht told KQRE. “I was scared. I was genuinely scared.”
The situation is objectively outrageous. Terrible. Shouldn’t happen. And the American Civil Liberties Union is already talking about helping the family sue the department. But then the kicker:
“I would never put my son in a position like that, ever,” said Albrecht. “I back the blue. I support the blue. Like, I always want to show him that, you know, you submit to these guys. That you’re supposed to be able to trust them.”
He and his family said they couldn’t believe how they were treated. “What did we do to warrant guns being pointed at our head?” Albrecht asked. “Pointing a loaded gun at a man’s head, it’s a threat, you know? And I didn’t feel like I earned that threat.”
“We’re talking about loaded weapons with one in the chamber where if he pulls that trigger on accident, I’m dead. My son’s dead. And then what? Then what are they going to say? Oh, we’re sorry. There’s no sorry for that,” Albrecht added.
There’s a reason Black Lives Matter and the “defund the police” movement exist, and it’s because this kind of brutality is a daily reality for way too many communities. Anyone who says they blindly “back the blue” and assumes you can unconditionally trust police is willfully indifferent to that reality.
Worse, it is exactly these people who prevent the deep reforms and real accountability that would make these occurrences a thing of the past.
But now that they’re personally affected? Oh, now everyone has to hear about this great injustice, one that wouldn’t likely rate an iota of coverage if it happened in a Black or brown neighborhood.
So why did the cop point a gun at William? “Officer Nevarez wrote in his report that the driver ‘looked mad with his hands clenched in the air,’” the story states. “The officer’s video shows Albrecht’s hands raised in the air, following the officer’s commands.” The story even shows a video still with William’s hands up in the air … unclenched.
As for the dog? She didn’t make it.
Sign the petition: Demand Congress remove “the shield of protection” from police.
Kerry and Markos talk about what is happening in Ukraine, what needs to be done, and why the fate of Ukraine is tied to democracy’s fate in 2024.
