{"id":43246,"date":"2016-07-14T11:14:38","date_gmt":"2016-07-14T15:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=43246"},"modified":"2016-07-14T11:15:25","modified_gmt":"2016-07-14T15:15:25","slug":"black-gop-senator-talks-about-being-pulled-over-by-police-7-times-in-one-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=43246","title":{"rendered":"Black GOP Senator Talks About Being Pulled Over By Police 7 Times In One Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"headline__subtitle\">\u201cThis is a situation that happens all across the country,\u201d Sen. Tim Scott said, \u201cwhether we want to recognize it or not.\u201d<\/h2>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Laura Barron-Lopez<br \/>\nThe Huffington Post<\/p>\n<div class=\"top-media\" data-beacon=\"{&quot;p&quot;:{&quot;mnid&quot;:&quot;top_media&quot;}}\">\n<div class=\"top-media--image\">\n<figure class=\"content-list-component image\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"image__src\" src=\"http:\/\/img.huffingtonpost.com\/asset\/scalefit_630_noupscale\/5786c0a01a00002600dd1404.jpeg\" \/><\/p>\n<h5 class=\"image__credit js-image-credit\">GARY CAMERON \/ REUTERS \u00a0\u00a0Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) shakes hands with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) at a news conference on criminal justice reform, Oct. 1, 2015.<\/h5>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"content-list-component text\">\n<p>WASHINGTON \u2015 In the course of one year as an elected official, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) was pulled over seven times by law enforcement. Another time, a Capitol Police officer demanded that Scott show him his ID because the special pin on Scott\u2019s suit jacket \u2015 a pin assigned to United States senators \u2015 evidently wasn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n<p>Scott shared these stories and more Wednesday evening during a roughly 18-minute speech on the Senate floor. He is the only black senator in the Republican conference, and one of just two in the upper chamber.<\/p>\n<p>His speech on Wednesday was the second in a series of three in response to a lone gunman killing five police officers in Dallas last week, as well as the police shootings of Alton Sterling, who was killed outside a convenience store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile, who was shot during a traffic stop in Minnesota. Scott delivered his first speech on Tuesday and plans to deliver the final one Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis speech is perhaps the most difficult, because it\u2019s the most personal,\u201d Scott said during his Wednesday remarks.<\/p>\n<p><!-- TAG START { player: \"Embed Player\", owner: \"Embed Company\", for: \"Embed\" } --><\/p>\n<div class=\"vdb_player vdb_5688f66de4b040e17d9912265688f5c1e4b0f2c97f395156\"><script src=\"\/\/delivery.vidible.tv\/jsonp\/pid=5688f66de4b040e17d991226\/vid=5786c543134aa1165453e645\/5688f5c1e4b0f2c97f395156.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/div>\n<p><!-- TAG END { date: 07\/14\/16 } --><\/p>\n<p>Scott\u2019s address on Wednesday came after four other senators urged their colleagues to take a vote on criminal justice reform \u2015 something many lawmakers say is badly needed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is a deep divide between the black community and law enforcement \u2015 a trust gap,\u201d Scott said. \u201cWe cannot ignore these issues. Because while so many officers do good \u2015 and we should be very thankful in support of all those officers that do good \u2015 some simply do not. I\u2019ve experienced it myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Scott said he chose to talk about his encounters with police, experiences that left him feeling humiliated and \u201cvery scared,\u201d because he\u2019s heard people trying to paint Castile and Walter Scott \u2015 a black man who was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/entry\/michael-slager-walter-scott-federal-charges_us_57333f3ae4b0bc9cb048adf9\" target=\"_blank\" data-beacon=\"{&quot;p&quot;:{&quot;mnid&quot;:&quot;entry_text&quot;,&quot;lnid&quot;:&quot;citation&quot;,&quot;mpid&quot;:1}}\">killed by a police officer in South Carolina<\/a> last year while running away \u2015 as criminals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOK, then,\u201d Scott said. \u201cI will share with you some of my own experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He continued:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I shuddered when I heard Eric Garner say \u201cI cannot breathe.\u201d I wept when I watched Walter Scott turn and run away and get shot and killed. And I broke when I heard the 4-year-old daughter of Philando Castile\u2019s girlfriend tell her mother, \u201cIt\u2019s OK,\u00a0I\u2019m right here with you\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>In the course of one year, I\u2019ve been stopped seven times by law enforcement officers. Not four, not five, not six, but seven times in one year as an elected official. Was I speeding sometimes? Sure. But the vast majority of the times, I was pulled over for nothing more than driving a new car in the wrong neighborhood, or some other reason just as trivial&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s easy to identify a U.S. senator by our pin. I recall walking into an office building just last year after being here for five years on the Capitol, and the officer looked at me, with a little attitude, and said: \u201cThe pin, I know. You, I don\u2019t. Show me your ID.\u201d I\u2019ll tell you, I was thinking to myself, \u201cEither he thinks I\u2019m committing a crime, impersonating a member of Congress\u201d \u2015 or, or what? Well, I\u2019ll tell you that later that evening I received a phone call from his supervisor apologizing for the behavior. Mr. President, that is at least the third phone call that I\u2019ve received from a supervisor or the chief of police since I\u2019ve been in the Senate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Scott is hardly alone. When The Huffington Post asked several black congressmen about their experiences with racism after the 2013 killing of Trayvon Martin, they<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2013\/07\/24\/black-congressmen-discrimination_n_3641493.html\" target=\"_blank\" data-beacon=\"{&quot;p&quot;:{&quot;mnid&quot;:&quot;entry_text&quot;,&quot;lnid&quot;:&quot;citation&quot;,&quot;mpid&quot;:2}}\">had remarkably similar stories<\/a> to tell.<\/p>\n<p>Scott went on to tell another story of when he was invited to an event with two of his staffers and two officers. \u201cAll four were white, and me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>When they arrived, the organizers didn\u2019t want to let Scott in, but they allowed everyone else. The officers refused to go in without him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a situation that happens all across the country, whether we want to recognize it or not,\u201d Scott said. \u201cIt may not happen 1,000 times a day, but it happens too many times a day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Scott ended his speech by calling on his colleagues to \u201crecognize that just because you do not feel the pain, the anguish, of another does not mean it does not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ignoring it, he said, will only leave people \u201cblind,\u201d and the nation \u201cvery vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As Scott began to walk off the floor, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who was scheduled to speak next on a different topic, took a moment to praise the South Carolina senator for his \u201cfrank discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t have enough diversity here,\u201d Boxer said. \u201cLet me just be clear: As much as all of us want to walk in each other\u2019s shoes, because each of us has different experiences in our lives, it really matters who\u2019s in the room, who\u2019s at the microphone and who\u2019s sharing the truth. And you have shared a truth with us today.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Watch Scott\u2019s speech above.<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/entry\/tim-scott-pulled-over_us_5786bfffe4b08608d332eaa0?section=\">Black GOP Senator Talks About Being Pulled Over By Police 7 Times In One Year<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThis is a situation that happens all across the country,\u201d Sen. Tim Scott said, \u201cwhether we want to recognize it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}