As we all know, police officers have a lot of discretion as to whom they choose to stop and whom they let go with a warning or worse.
An African-American North Texas police officer recently gave a teenager the option of being cited for marijuana possession or doing 200 pushups after the boy was caught smoking marijuana outside a movie theater, CBS News reports.
The teen smartly went for the pushups.
Off-duty Officer Eric Ball smelled marijuana while working on an off-duty detail at the theater. He confronted the teen and laid out his choices and then found the boy’s mother inside. She reportedly hugged and thanked the officer.
Ball relayed that he played football under coaches who used pushups to ensure discipline.
A woman who posted a video of the struggling teen, which has been viewed on Facebook more than 230,000 times, commented about how she was really happy that “not all police are bad,” and said she was going to show it to her own son. She wrote:
Big UP's to the Arlington Police Officer that made the young black guy that decided to smoke weed on the movie theater parking lot to do push-ups then take him to jail or shoot him just Cuz. We need more cops like this. #Policeeverywhereneedtotakenotes #ArlingtonPoliceDept
https://www.facebook.com/raiza.paredez/videos/vb.1777555710/10202645846785493/?type=2&theater
Yet in a post two days later, the woman asked for commentary because some thought the officer might get in trouble or be fired because of her post.
https://www.facebook.com/raiza.paredez/posts/10202650062090873?pnref=story
The latter is unlikely because Bell’s department actually gave the press information about the incident.
For more of black Twitter, check out The Chatterati on The Root and follow The Chatterati on Twitter.