Busted for possession of iced tea....

[pokerfan]

When rapper Christopher "Xstrav" Beatty waited for his friend Money Mal outside of a Fayetteville, North Carolina liquor store on April 29, he thought he'd enjoy a refreshing AriZona Iced Tea. He and Tito Brown waited at their car in the store parking lot, and Brown filmed them hanging out. Beatty's iced tea was half pink lemonade, half sweet tea, and contained no alcohol whatsoever. But the mere sight of Beatty drinking out of the can was apparently enough to motivate an undercover cop to ask questions.

Beatty was approached by the cop, who was not in uniform and did not show any identification. The cop demanded that Beatty hand over his drink, and when the rapper expressed hesitation at handing his tea to a man in plainclothes with no I.D. and no probable cause, the cop turned hostile. He ordered Beatty to leave the premises and then seemingly changed his mind, forcing him onto the ground, where he handcuffed him and forced him to lay while awaiting arrest.

http://www.policymic.com/articles/39293/north-carolina-rapper-busted-for-possession-of-an-arizona-iced-tea

[ZombieHorde]

1. Fuck. nt

[Warren DeMontague]

2. Guilty of HACWB

Holding A Can While Black.

[Cleita]

9. Exactly. That's disgusting. n/t

[Fumesucker]

3. DWB

Drinking While Black.

Dude's lucky he didn't get shot.

[Hayabusa]

28. He didn't have Skittles.

That's the line between being arrested and being shot.

[Th1onein]

4. Law enforcement has been out of control for a long time now

I have a feeling that we are just now seeing all of this because of cell phones and the internet. It's about time we reined them in.

[pokerfan]

5. Bad cop, no donut

Dude, you're in plain clothes. Why the reluctance to show your badge?

[datasuspect]

8. in the cop's mind

the african american male is just an animal. in his mind, he has no obligation or duty to exercise humanity or restraint. Nor does he have an obligation to uphold the law. the average pig makes shit up as they go along.

[Cali_Democrat]

13. Bingo. n/t

[MattBaggins]

30. The saddest truth...

[Occulus]

21. He sounds like a cop on a drug team.

Those motherfuckers never like being IDed.

I knew someone once who publicly called out- in a very crowded grocery store, no less- a member of the "multijurisdictional drug enforcement team" we have here. The guy had been raided for what was claimed by the anonymous tipster to be coke and lots of guns, but was actually only a thimbleful of pot. On that basis and that basis alone, without any other evidence of any kind beyond what someone accused, eight men came by one day, ransacked the apartment for almost three hours... and all they came away with was a thimble of weed and the bowl it was smoked in. They were very very very very very pissed off when they left.

Anyway, he saw one of these motherfuckers in the store one day. Big, big lines. Called him out by name and told everyone there he was on that particular crew by asking him how his job on that team was going. The guy he called out turned six shades closer to paper white, literally dropped his groceries on the floor in the middle of the checkout line, and bolted out of the store.

Big, tough, manly man drug team cop... who couldn't even tolerate being identified for what he was: a fucking thug. No more, no less, and the whole team is cut from the same arrogant, self-important, undisciplined, incompetent, 'roid-raged cloth. I say incompetent because they didn't even look in places I would have hidden drugs as a matter of course, had I anything harder than pot. I know they didn't look there, because those items were some of the few things still undisturbed and in their place.

This same team had an issue with some of its members stealing drug evidence from the evidence lockers at one point. I'm pretty sure they were getting high every night, if not selling the shit they stole from two-bit users themselves. These assholes are so arrogant, they'll trash a place in a search for drugs, and leave only a pithy little "call me, ###-####" on the table as a goodbye kiss. Real, real pieces of work, are the KVET shitstains. Asshole fuckresidue. Santorum, in human skin, with badges.

It occurs to me that, if we have police who cannot countenance mere public identification of who they are and what they do, perhaps those police should not be doing that thing at all.

[LuvNewcastle]

34. I was arrested by one of those bastards once.

I was minding my own business drinking my beer in a bar and some guy walked up and asked to see my idea. I asked who he was (I didn't know if he was the owner of the bar or what) and he threw me against the wall and handcuffed me. He got his partner and they drove me downtown to jail in an unmarked car. They never properly identified themselves.

I had to call a friend to come get me. I wasn't thrown in a cell or booked, but it was a real hassle to get someone out of bed to come get me at that time of the night. They took me to jail just because they could. I think cops like that have fantasies about being in the Gestapo.

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. Hope we hear Chapter 2...The Lawsuit.

[MrScorpio]

7. Add drinking "Drinking Tea While Black" to the list of offenses that we have to worry about now nt

[The Straight Story]

10. It was probably more than 16 oz's, too much sugar for adults to choose to have

And another excuse for cops to question people

[ManiacJoe]

11. Busted for trespassing.

The cop does not have to be right (and he was not), unfortunately he just needs to be in a position of authority.

Had Beatty left the property when asked to do so, there would have been nothing to report here.

[MrScorpio]

14. That was a completely bogus detainment and arrest from start to finish

Asshole cops.

[ManiacJoe]

15. Very true.

[MrScorpio]

17. I'd sue these motherfuckers for an illegal arrest in a heartbeat nt

[MindPilot]

16. Just do what you're told and everything will be OK.

Lord, authoritarians piss me off.

[Nevernose]

18. No, it wasn't trespassing

One is under no obligation to leave a parking lot simply because a random stranger tells one to. He said he was a cop but presented no identification; he did not identify himself as a business owner. And if his friend was in the store, he had not entered another's property with the intent to annoy, harass, or vex the owner of that property.

[ManiacJoe]

20. The cop would have a better case if "X"

had been given the opportunity to leave after the cop showed his badge. As it stands now, the whole thing should be thrown out of court.

[SoCalDem]

19. Perhaps if Beatty had been on the cop's driveway

instead of in a parking lot for customers (which one of the car's occupants was )..

How is waiting for a friend who's inside, trespassing?

Do other customers have to be dropped off, with no one waiting outside in a car?

[Cali_Democrat]

12. CITWB (carrying iced tea while black) can get you killed

See Trayvon Martin.

[KentuckyWoman]

22. I think we all know this is not about ice tea.

In spite of the heavily edited video and the bizarreness of having a film crew standing by just to film a rapper drinking ice tea in a parking lot (bullshit detector alert) it's painfully obvious race is the primary factor here. Rapper "Xstrav" no doubt would not have been cuffed in the ground awaiting a squad car if he was a white dude in a suit with his film crew.

At the end of the day though..... Private property, they asked him to leave, he wouldn't, he was arrested.

[truebluegreen]

23. An unidentified man asked him to leave.

Do you leave every time a random stranger tells you to?

[KentuckyWoman]

25. heavily edited video

Perhaps your assessment is right but without the full video I don't feel qualified to make the call.

[truebluegreen]

26. According to your previous post, you did feel qualified.

[KentuckyWoman]

31. racism yes

but that is my assumption based on society not the video.

The reason so many people were skeptical, which prompted them to post another edit, is because the entire video is not seen and who takes a film crew to film drinking tea?

so no. I don't feel qualified to make a judgement on that aspect....

[truebluegreen]

33. OK, that's fair.

And welcome to DU.

[rug]

27. That's right, private property the cop did not own. The owner didn't tell him to leave.

Oh, and it's the parking lot of a store open to the public.

A complete bullshit arrest.

[OnlinePoker]

35. Unless the cop is moonlighting as security for the complex.

If that's the case, is he allowed to use his authority as a police officer if he's working as a security guard?

[rug]

36. If he's the agent of the owner, yes.

But he never identified himself as such.

Instead, he flashed a badge, presumably his PD badge. In that case he's abusing his police power in furtherance of a private interest.

[jmowreader]

32. Oh my God, you don't know Fayetteville, NC

The Fayetteville Police Department LOVES to bust white guys. Especially white soldiers, which Fayetteville is full of. And they'll pull your ass over for really inconsequential shit. I was driving to work one morning about 4 am (yes, I went to work that early) and saw a cop. So I rolled down my window, stuck my hand out and waved at him...you know, just to be friendly. Dude pulled my ass over and started screaming at me for flipping him off. So I showed him what I did - held up my hand with all five fingers together and waved it from side to side. "Why would you do that?" Uhh...to be nice? "Well, don't do it again." Also, Fayettevile (I was going to fix that typo, then realized it was better that way) is the home of one of the worst speed traps in the state of North Carolina. One of the biggest roads leading to Fort Bragg is Owen Drive/All American Freeway. (Streets change names in Fayetteville.) This road has a bridge across US 401. At the south end of the bridge speed is 45mph. At the north end it is 55. Between 5:30 am and 9:00 am, about two-thirds of the cops in Fayetteville line up on the north side of the bridge to catch anyone who accelerates to 55 while they're on the bridge like it makes sense to do. So...if you want to commit any real serious crimes in Fayetteville do it then because you'll never be caught.

Of course, you can't get them to come over and look at actual crimes. True story: one of my paper salesmen, who lived in Fayetteville, had his car stolen. About a week later he was at a convenience store and the asshole who stole his car drove up in it. Paper salesman guy called the worthless Fayetteville PD and told them, "Hi, my name is so-and-so, I reported my car stolen a week ago, I'm at the BP on US 301 and someone just drove up in my car, could you send someone down to arrest him?" (The cops patrol the 301 heavily because there are lots of hookers and cheap motels there. It wouldn't have been more than a couple minutes before they got there.) The cops asked if he had insurance on it. "Yes I did." The cops then told him not to worry about it, the insurance company would make him whole again. So my guy got in his car and drove away.

It's not fair to compare the Fayetteville Police Department to the Keystone Cops...those guys were supposed to be incompetent.

[pokerfan]

24. Court date scheduled for June 6, 2013

Found this...

When commenters on Youtube began to suggest that the video was in some way staged, a second video uploaded to the same Youtube channel showed uniformed Fayetteville police officers arriving on the scene and placing a handcuffed Mr. Beatty into the back of a patrol car.

According to the North Carolina Court System website, Mr. Beatty was arrested for 5709 Misdemeanor Second Degree Trespass 14-159.13 and 5310 Misdemeanor Resisting Public Officer 14-223. His court date is scheduled for June 6, 2013.

http://latinrapper.com/blogs/?p=6612

[Logical]

29. Well, this fucking cop will get no punishment. And will not pay any of the damages awarded. Idiots!