Revolution #172, August 9, 2009
“Driving While Black” in Bellaire, Texas
Robbie Tolan, 23 years old, lives with his parents in Bellaire, a well-off, predominantly white suburb of Houston. Robbie had hopes of playing major league baseball. He was a member of a conference-winning college team, and he’d played in the Washington Nationals farm system. His father, Bobby Tolan, was a successful pro player for 14 years, playing with the World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals in 1967 and the Cincinnati Reds and other teams in the 1970s.
But all that did not stop this young Black man from being profiled as a “criminal”—in his own driveway—and being shot by a cop.
About 2 a.m. on December 31, 2008, Robbie Tolan and his cousin Anthony Cooper were returning home in Robbie’s SUV after a late-night meal. The police claim that Officer John Edwards ran the SUV’s license plate info, and the car came back as stolen. In a segment of the February 17, 2009 episode of his HBO show Real Sports, Bryant Gumble reported on what happened next:
Officer Edwards called for back up and Sgt. Jeffery Cotton arrived on the scene. The two officers confronted Robbie Tolan and Anthony Cooper as they were approaching the front door of their home. “There was no, ‘this is the police’ or nothing. Just emerges from the dark.” said Robbie Tolan. “The gun, flashlight pointed at me and my cousin, ‘Get down on the ground.’” Robbie and Anthony were both lying on the ground when Marian and Bobby Tolan heard the commotion and came outside. “And I said, ‘this is my house my car, my son, my nephew. It’s not stolen,’” said Bobby Tolan. The Tolans then say that Sgt. Cotton pushed Mrs. Tolan against the garage door. At that point, Robbie reared up off the ground and said: “Get your fucking hands off my mom!” Sgt. Cotton then turned and fired his gun hitting Robbie Tolan in the chest. “The guy never said a word,” said Marian Tolan. “He never said, ‘shut up,’ he never said ‘get down’ or ‘stay down.’ He never said a word, he picked his gun, he took his gun and he just shot him.”
Cotton was suspended from the force and was indicted in April for aggravated assault, but he still walks free. The Bellaire police, outrageously, deny that they are guilty of racial profiling. But as Gumble pointed out, the facts reveal a very different picture:
Bellaire has a population of almost 16,000 and is less than one percent black. However, in 2007, 22 percent of the motorists given traffic tickets in Bellaire were black and 39 percent of the motorists who were stopped and searched were black, according to data collected by the Bellaire Police Department. In 2005, black drivers in Bellaire were almost 12 times more likely to be pulled over and asked for a consent search than whites.
The transcript of the Real Sports report (Episode 143) can be found online at: hbo.com/realsports/stories/2009/episode.143.s1.html.
Robbie Tolan survived the shooting seven months ago. But his dream of playing pro ball has been shattered. Parts of the police bullet are still in his liver. This is the first baseball season he can remember spending as a spectator, not as a player on the field. “I’m trying to get back in the swing of things,” he says, “but I can’t throw without pain.”
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