La Cucaracha by Lalo Alcaraz for October 07, 2014

It went down a bit differently than that—the driver didn’t even get a chance to hand the license over. You can see the (non-commercial!) video of the incident here:

Luckily, in this case video exists of what went down. And because of the very clear video evidence, the cop has been both fired and indicted, and faces up to 20 years in prison. But it still begs the question: Why would the cop automatically sense a threat and start firing? I mean, if the driver had been Sean Hannity, it would apparently have been no problem.

The vic is obviously innocent and the cop obviously screwed up big-time, very possibly criminally. But I’ve talked to many cops about their experiences, and I can understand how a cop approaching someone — anyone — would be on edge. But shooting on suspicion is just not right.

Do you think you might want to reword your comment a little? Tricky things, pronouns.

Right, he should have shot the cop first? Standing his ground? How long would that sentence be, or straight to the gurney?

darn you! You beat me to the punchline!

Yet the left constantly claims we do not need to carry concealed weapons because we’re protected by the police……

Yeah, that would have turned out real well for this guy.

A black cop recently shot a white guy in the back because he pulled up his pants. He had his ear buds in and didn’t here what the black cop said.

And, carrying your argument forward, how would concealed carry have helped in this situation? Also, are you claiming that the cop shot this guy because of a general societal fear of white men?

Look, police brutality needs to be stopped. Period. There are brutal cops of every race, and victims of brutality of every race. The great preponderance of brutality is caused by white cops against people of color, and the racism behind that especially needs to be addressed. But if we can manage to reduce police brutality across the board—and video cameras on patrol vehicle dashboards and worn by officers might help—then that would be positive for everyone. Right?

Since the character on the right has been previously explained as black, is the other one named “Beandock”?

and…

since Beandocks isn’t a location…

I don’t follow your logic. It’s pretty clear that, just as with The Boondocks, The Beandocks is also a location. Also, following the Boondocks/Beandocks pattern, it’s pretty safe to conclude that the two characters in The Beandocks are the same ethnicity as each other, mapped to Huey and Caesar in The Boondocks.

Thankfully the white cop lost his badge and is facing criminal charges. Lalo forgot to mention this.

So what does Beandocks mean?

Beandocks is a play on Aaron McGruder’s Boondocks, as you well know. It’s the substitution of one proper name for another, a play on words, not an attempt to create a new entry in the dictionary. And, as we’ve gone round and round about before, the name is a play on a stereotyping of Latinos, by a Latino, in a way that pokes fun of the stereotype and takes some power away from it.

As for whether the characters are black, what exactly does it matter? Are you objecting to cartoonists having characters of races/ethnicities other than their own? If so, then Doonesbury, For Better or for Worse, The Knight Life, The Boondocks, and a host of other strips are in trouble. In any case, Alcaraz has stated here, “I decided to do my own Afro-Latin version.” So, yes, they’re black, but they’re black Latinos.

The driver isn’t totally faultless.

The driver was faultless enough that the cop was summarily fired and is up on charges. Yes, it’s best to try to be and act as calm as possible when there’s someone with a gun confronting you, but folks can be understandably be made nervous by someone with a gun as well. Also, the cop told the driver to get his ID, and the driver complied with that order. (Well, tried to comply, except that he got shot for it.)

Should a term like Beandocks be appropriate for a family newspaper?

Apparently family newspapers think so, since they keep running it.

And if credit is given to Lalo, should anyone be able to poke fun of it?

That’s the nature of parody, so I’d say it’s fair game.

Can anyone do black-latino-irish-asian-autistic characters and place them in a similar location, or only Lalo?

Anyone can. Whether they’d want to, or be criticized for it, is another question. If it’s a non-neurotypical doing humor about non-neurotypicals, why not? McGruder did his own satire in the papers and on TV, so that covers the black angle. Irish folks could probably do the same thing about Irish folks, etc. Why not?

No argument today, cop should be brought up on charges.

Put another way, the driver was legally right but did a rather stupid thing, regardless of race.

And put another way, the driver did what he was told to do and suffered a criminal act against his person. Which is why the cop is under indictment. Why keep putting this on the driver? Would you do the same for someone who’s shot by a robber? Are you so certain you would have all your wits about you in the face of an aggressive cop?

Again, I ask you whether you’re certain you’d have your wits about you to do all that in this situation? Yes, of course you should try to act calm and make slow, smooth motions. I’m sure the guy who got shot is thinking about what he could have done differently. But in the heat of the moment, what you should do often flies out the window. You’re not in hypothetical land any more. Maybe we should start having trainings for school kids to drill into their heads how they should act when the nice policeman starts yelling at you. Or maybe cops need to be retrained, and a different kind of attitude and temperament recruited.

When you’re talking about percentages of blame, you’re generally talking about civil suits. This cop’s up on criminal charges and has lost his job. He’s going to be found guilty or not guilty, or there’ll be a hung jury or mistrial.

Again, is it “fair” to put the blame on someone who’s shot while being robbed? Or maybe should there be a focus on the one who did the shooting? This is yet another unarmed black man being shot by a white cop. What’s different about this time is it’s on video and the police department in question took positive action.