>
Hunter Demster, an organizer for the group Decarceration Memphis who has raised red flags about SCORPION and other plainclothes units in Memphis, said people in neighborhoods with higher crime want more police officers to solve murders, but when the department puts these patrols in their communities what they get is targeted harassment.
“A good friend of mine, Chase, got pulled over about a month ago by an ... unmarked car, unmarked clothing. And the officer said that his license plate was bent in the corner and everything was still visible. They use that as a pretext to do an investigation into hoping they can smell weed,” Demster said.

These units act with impunity looking for any reason to arrest people regardless of the validity of such arrests. We need top down reform of these units at the federal level. >

Guess I am naïve but why is a supposedly  "elite" cop group dealing with reckless drivers? Whole thing sounds fishy IMO. That poor sweet boy. How very low we have sunk. >

I was wondering the exact same thing.   Why does a whole team need to deal with 1 fucking traffic stop? And reckless driving is such a broad term its stupid. It could be driving 10 over or jumping the curbs to run over trash cans...its just fucking stupid. >

This wasn’t a traffic stop. It was a “traffic stop.”
Cops using the pretext of a traffic stop for a minor traffic violation to pull a person over and find some reason to extend the stop.
It’s bullshit, and it’s illegal, but it’s hard to prove. >

Police shouldn’t get to name their units stuff like scorpion first of all. Just endorsing the violence right up front to a creepy degree. >

It's truly sick that they use names that implicitly condone violence. >

When I think of a scorpion unit, I’m thinking of a special ops mission onto occupied territory where every inhabitant is a potential insurgent. >

So are they. >

With the way policing is going, they pretty much are. Everybody in their eyes is a potential target.
Even an elder who can’t help but alway see police as the good guys can be potential target.
According to him, Nichols was “probably just another loser”. Even if evidence says otherwise. He just wants the police to be in the right so badly that he has to assume the victim deserved it, even if he has fabricate their entire criminal record in his head.
He doesn’t realize that it doesn’t matter if he waves the thin blue line. They’ll pull him over just because they feel like it, and they won’t care who he is or what he stands for. Because he doesn’t have a badge, he’s not one of them, and that’s enough for them. >

The cops are just going to keep acting like they're surrounded by enemies until they actually are.