Alarming Female

This morning I woke up to local radio station X96 and the “Radio From Hell” program (this is how some of us in SLC survive the cruel joke which living in Utah sometimes is). As is the case every weekday morning, dj Bill Allred read the candidates for Boner of the Day:

1. I Can Screw You Over
2. Pee Money
3. Your Child’s School Attendance Record is Unacceptable

The BOTD candidates are meant to be examples of “bad, stupid, or funny human behavior.” While Candidate #2 was never a contender, Candidate #3, the story of parents who received a letter from their daughter’s school criticizing her attendance patterns, though the girl had been found dead in her home two months earlier, was a major faux pas (that’s French for “fuck up”).

However, today’s winner was Candidate #1, the story of Ryan Moats, who, when rushing to the hospital with his wife and family to be with his mother-in-law in the last moments of her losing battle with breast cancer, made a decision to run a red light. He made sure there was no oncoming cross traffic before he entered the intersection to continue the race against time to his mother-in-law’s bedside.

Dallas police officer Robert Powell pursued Mr. Moats and his family to the hospital parking lot and drew his gun on Mrs. Moats when she got out of the car to hurry into the hospital. Even after hospital staff came outside to inform the officer that yes, indeed, Mr. Moats’ mother-in-law was near death, Officer Powell refused to allow Mr. Moats to join his wife. By the time the Officer Powell was finished issuing a ticket to Mr. Moats and bade him free to go, it was too late. Mr. Moats’ MIL had passed away. The video of the stop, as recorded by the police cruiser, is available here.

Officer Powell surely abused his power; everyone agrees on that. Mr. and Mrs. Moats are African American. Over zealous abuse of power by a cop against a Black suspect–not a rare combination, sadly.

Here’s the “long reach” part: I have a friend in NYC who co-hosts a sports radio show called LA Batchelor, which looks at college and professional sports and how they intersect with issues of race and racism. I emailed the link about the story to him wanting to get his take on it. He was planning to cover it on today’s show. I told him about the BOTD situation on Radio From Hell, and he ended up mentioning X96 as part of the intro to the story.

I love the Internets for exactly this reason–it’s a means for real people to pass real news to other people. Because you know, sure as hell, that The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.



*hey, this was the cleanest title I could come up with. There were just so many possibilities!