Houston College Student Who Runs Lawn Mowing Service to Pay Tuition Brutally Assaulted by Police for No Apparent Reason

A 20 year old Black business student by the name of Marlin Gipson has been raising money to pay his school tuition for the past couple years by running his own lawn-cutting service along with his brother and their friend in Houston’s Willow Spring subdivision. Apparently this is enough to get a young Black person arrested in Texas’s Harris County, where all three young men were arrested in their own home all because a police officer, Deputy Shane Cates, decided that 20 year old Gipson should not be allowed to walk the streets without carrying a state-licensed identification card at all times.

It all started July 25 when Marlin Gipson was outside mowing grass and was approached by officer Cates, who allegedly pushed Gipson off the lawnmower he was operating. Gipson explained to Cates that he was simply mowing grass and wasn’t doing harm to anyone, and he even gave the officer a copy of his business card showing that he in fact runs a lawn-mowing service. This annoyed Deputy Cates, who ordered Gipson to produce a state-licensed ID card, even though Gipson was not driving a vehicle on the road and in most places not called Nazi Germany one doesn’t have to carry an ID with them at all times or else risk being detained. Gipson, understandably confused as to why he was being treated like a criminal for cutting grass, asked Deputy Cates very politely, “Can I have a card, please, sir, to write your name down for me?” In response to this very simple and reasonable request, Cates took out his handcuffs and instructed Marlin Gipson, who’d committed not a single offense, “Turn around and put your hands behind your back.” Cates did this because he knows that in Amerikkka cops have free reign to rule however they see fit, and they can arrest and kill someone simply for looking at them “the wrong way.” (This was the case long before Trump came along and officially endorsed and encouraged such a reality.)

The distraught young man quite understandably went into his home to get away from the jack-booted police thug Cates, and Cates responded by breaking down his door, attacking him with a vicious k-9, tasering him twice, and arresting his 22 year old brother and 21 year old friend for good measure. Marlin Gipson has been ludicrously charged with “failing to identify to a police officer”, despite the fact that he showed the officer a business card with his name on it, and “evading arrest.” The legal system in this country will stop at nothing to ensure young people do not succeed, and will go even further to try and stop this young Black man from having a successful career in business. The brutal reality is that the way Gipson was treated by Cates is in fact standard procedure when it comes to how police in Harris County treat members of the community, as evidenced by the fact that Cates’s horrifically violent behavior was given a stamp of approval by his supervisor, Constable Alan Rosen, who defended Cates’s interaction with Gipson stating, “I don’t believe our officers have done one thing wrong at all.” Not one thing?! Statements such as this make me believe it would be only fair for Deputy Shane Cates and Constable Alan Rosen to be locked in a room, tasered and mauled by vicious canines for hours. Then they should be told afterward that “nothing wrong” was done to them. Rosen went on to state that “We have one of the most diverse offices there is in Harris County… and it really incenses me to have somebody say that they were targeted because of their race.” And it really incenses me when someone cites supposed diversity as a defense for their racist brutality.

It’s truly mind-boggling to think that right now there are states in which educational material is being added to the state curriculum instructing students how they are to behave when interacting with police officers, when the reality is far too many police officers aren’t even able to interact with members of the public without morphing into wild, bloodthirsty beasts.