Source: Jeff Greenberg / Getty
Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A Black man and a racist white man get into a fight after the white man called the Black man racial slurs. The cops show up and arrest the Black man while the white man isn’t arrested at all.
This is what happened at a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, hotel back in January, but there are more details that make the arrest even more egregious.
According to CBS Miami, the whole thing started when Best Western Hotel employee Raymond Rachal canceled a hotel guest’s stay because the guest, Jason Rabe, allegedly called him racial slurs. So, Rabe left the hotel but then he returned later on and walked straight toward Rachal pushing past the security gate and getting right in the employee’s face with clear aggressive intent. So, that’s when Rachal punched Rabe in the face and a brawl ensued.
It was all caught on camera, and now civil rights attorney Ben Crump is wondering why the Black man was arrested for defending himself.
The video begins with Rachal sitting behind his desk, literally just minding his own business when Rabe comes at him. After the fight, which Rabe clearly started then lost miserably, Rachal pinned him down while a bystander called the police. But that didn’t work out very well for the clear victim in the case.
Maybe Rachal and the 911 caller forgot that “stand your ground” doesn’t work for Black people. Maybe they momentarily forgot that when cops come to the scene after a fight, they often fail to even consider the possibility that a Black person acted in self-defense.
So, later in the video, the police show up and Rachal immediately stood up. That didn’t stop an officer from, for seemingly no reason whatsoever, shoving Rachal multiple times as Rachal reportedly tried to tell him to check the security camera footage to see what happened. Later, the police are seen taking Rachal away in handcuffs. According to CBS, he was “initially accused of several charges, including resisting officers with violence.”
In fact, according to the police report, the male officer seen in the video accused Rachal of pushing him, not the other way around, but the video shows nothing of the sort. (And that’s why I can never emphasize enough that a cop’s word should never be taken at face value.)
The other crazy thing is, earlier that same day, police were called to the hotel because Rabe, who was visibly drunk at the time, according to police, refused to leave the property. Yet Rabe wasn’t arrested then or after the fight he started.
CBS reported that the state’s attorney’s office said Rachal will not face any charges, but there’s still no word on whether Rabe will be charged with anything, whether the cop who pushed Rachal and lied about being pushed himself will face any discipline or why TF Rachal was arrested in the first place.