This story was brought to my attention by David Person, a journalist and broadcaster in Huntsville, Alabama who has me on his show every Thursday afternoon.
I would like to believe that this story would make the Times even if it didn’t feature the son of a former professional baseball player.
Robbie Tolan was returning from work when a Bellaire police officer concluded that he looked suspicious.
What could be suspicious about a kid driving up to his own house and parking the car?
Well, if we are talking about a virtually all-white neighborhood and the kid in the car is black . . .
Concluding that the kid must have stolen the car, the officer called for backup. Then he told the driver and his youthful friend to get face down on the ground.
As Sgt. Jeffrey Cotton arrived on the scene, Bobby Tolan and his wife were rushing out of the home in their pajamas to explain the situation. Cotton must have thought they looked suspicious as well because, according to the family, he grabbed Ms. Tolan by the arm and threw her into a garage door.
Robbie Tolan leapt from the ground to defend his mother. That’s when Jeffrey Cotton drew his weapon and fired.
Fortunately, the young man has recovered fully from his wounds and now Sgt. Cotton has been indicted.
The question now is whether Cotton, and the first officer on the scene, were guilty of racial profiling.
Here’s an easy way to answer that question: try to imagine a simlar scenario unfolding if the kid in the car and the alarmed parents in pajamas were every bit as white as Sgt. Cotton.
You see the problem.
April 7, 2009
Police Officer Is Charged in Shooting of Texas Man
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
HOUSTON – A Harris County grand jury indicted a police sergeant Monday in the shooting of a young man outside his home on New Year’s Eve. The case has attracted widespread attention because the victim’s family accused the police of racial profiling.
Sgt. Jeffrey Cotton, a 39-year-old veteran in the Bellaire Police Department, was charged with aggravated assault by a public servant in the shooting of Robert Tolan, a 23-year-old waiter. The sergeant is white, and Mr. Tolan is black. Mr. Tolan, who was shot in his driveway while his parents looked on, survived, though a bullet pierced his right lung and lodged in his liver.
Just before the shooting, Sergeant Cotton and another officer had forced Mr. Tolan and his cousin to lie face down on the ground at gunpoint after they had gotten out of their car. The officers believed the car had been stolen, but it turned out to belong to Mr. Tolan, who is the son of Bobby Tolan, a former major league baseball player, and aspires to be a baseball player.
“The Tolans are the only African-American family on the block,” said a lawyer for the family, Geoffrey Berg. “Bellaire engages in racial profiling, and this is the logical result of that policy.”
The Bellaire city manager, Bernie Satterwhite, rejected that assertion.
“There is nothing about the indictment or any investigation which even suggests that race played any role in the stop or Sergeant Cotton’s actions when he arrived as a backup officer,” Mr. Satterwhite said, reading a prepared statement.
David Donahue, a member of Sergeant Cotton’s legal team, said the officer had fired only after Mr. Tolan leaped up and attacked him. “He felt he was in immediate danger,” he said.
As the Tolan family recounts the story, Mr. Tolan and his cousin obeyed an order from the first officer on the scene, John Edwards, to lay on the ground. As Sergeant Cotton arrived in a second patrol car, Bobby Tolan and his wife, Marion, came out of the house in their pajamas.
Mrs. Tolan tried to tell Sergeant Cotton that the police had made a mistake – that it was her son’s car, Mr. Berg said. The sergeant grabbed her by the arm and threw her against a garage door, the family says. As Robbie Tolan tried to rise to defend his mother, Sergeant Cotton fired at least three times, hitting him once in the chest, Mr. Berg said.
Friends of Justice 
Okay, so Sgt. Cotton thinks this is suspicious. Why not first check Tolan’s DL and pay a little more attention to Mrs. Tolan’s objection. Is it racial profiling? Well, to me, and to Alan Bean, and to most of the readers of this post it certainly looks, walks, and smells like it. Whether racial profiling or no, Sgt. Cotton was quick on the trigger. Kudos to Harris County Grand Jury for the indictment. My prediction is, given the widespread feeling that police must protect themselves, that either the case will never go to trial or that there will be an acquittal.
Profiling seems present in Tolan’s case. As in a Batson juror challenge, the absence of another explanation (such as a license plate check indicating the vehicle was reported stolen) infers that Tolan’s race is what made him look suspiciously out of place to the indicted police sergeant. The sergeant’s own race may or may not have been relevant to his thinking, since the thinking reflects stereotypes that an officer of any race might indulge.
While that is a serious matter, the greater issue is that someone, in this case a young athlete, was very unnecessarily shot in the liver with an officer’s service weapon. Tolan’s good prognosis is amazing, yet in this case the officer’s wrong and damaging behavior merited an indictment. Now public opinion on the racial issue has swung opposite the mindset that led to the tragedy.
One wonders whether the class of the victim and his family, his father a former professional athlete in his upscale Bellaire neighborhood, got them more stroke and attention than the poor and troubled survivors of Trent Buckins. See, http://www.topix.com/forum/city/lake-charles-la/T3HHR21QS1F2P3MP1 (“Just-Freed Buckins Spent Night on Trampoline Before Death”).
Trent, who was also black, had schizophrenia and could be a handfull, but he was small and no athlete. Sitting at counsel table, he looked like I could easily have pinned him to the floor with one arm if the need arose. He had been in jail a year on a misdemeanor carrying up to six months. A friend had agreed to house him, but for Trent to proceed, he needed to reverse an adjudication of incompetence. Otherwise the court could not take his well-supported guilty plea and let him out on time served. Everyone wished him well– the judge, the psychologist, the psychiatrist, and the prosecutor. Initially the doctor repeated the finding of incompetence. Then, Trent blurted out in coherent detail how he had malingered to escape a chaotic drug situation at home. The doctor’s opinion changed, his plea was carefully taken, and he was a free man that evening.
The next morning, our director, now Judge Ron Ware, was the first to tell me that Trent Buckins had just been killed by police. A city officer on morning school security detail had noticed Trent struggling on a bicycle with his cardboard box of belongings en route from the jail to his friend’s house. Concern turned to confrontation as the well-known schizophrenic and unarmed little Trent was deemed noncompliant with officer instructions. Soon three officers were involved in an attempt to re-arrest him, to which he declined to submit. One officer fired a tethered-projectile Taser at him, managing only to strike another officer’s eyeglasses. Her subsequent step was to draw her service weapon and shoot Trent dead. She claimed she saw him going for another officer’s gun, but later before the grand jury the other two police each said they didn’t see anything one way or the other. A No True Bill was returned. No charge was made by bill of information, which would have defeated the purpose of the grand jury insulating the DA politically. The civil statue of limitations has run with no suit filed. But the wound hasn’t healed.
I envision a modest Trent Buckins Transportation Fund starting in his own parish, that would pay cab fare or medical transportation for such as he, the many sick, homeless, and stranded who are daily released from incarceration with nothing to do but set out as best they can in a dangerous and authoritarian world. When I eventually release my “Jailhouse Songs” CD I am pledging a portion of its proceeds for that purpose.
I know Jeff and his family I was his daghters best friend and neighbor and he is not racial he and the rest of us would hang out with Tony who is mexican and Jerome who is black they were a big patr of his life as well as my father so if ur reading this and you havent ever really got to know Jeff than you should think twice before you judge someone.
One need not know the officer personally to judge him.
He along with every other human being will always be judged by their actions. I hope he is found guilty. Perhaps it will serve as a small reminder to the police that they are not above the law they are suppose to enforce. In the event that he is found “innocent” of the charges he faces, atleast he will have learned a lesson in what it feels like to be accused wrongfully; a lesson he taught Robbie with his gun.
Give me a break, Sgt. Cotton could have used his taser, instead he decided to use his gun. He’s a coward and to hear “his friend” say he has “mexican & black” people he hangs out with is just pathetic, and insincere. The guy’s a racist and most of the police department is as well. I hope he gets the maximum, and I hope the Tolan’s legal team hit’s the city in the pocket. That seems to be the only thing that gets the attention of these types of people. By the way, the Mayor?? she lives in a dream world, what a joke.
A police officer is authorized to use deadly force when a life is threatened or serious bodily injury is probable. Neither of these circumstances were present in this case. Besides, without even getting into some of the questionable legal battles, I would like to know why a police officer would run the plate of a passing car that was not violating any law. It is obviously racial profiling and an ille-gal shooting. Inasmuch as police shoot to kill, I submit Cotton be charged with attempted murder.