History of BBONC From Miles Davis Thabo Sefolosha

It has never been formally adopted as law, but Being Black Outside a Night Club is still punishable by arrest and an extra-judicial beating in New York. The first widely-publicized instance occurred in August 1959, when a cop hit Miles Davis over the head with a club for standing outside Birdland, then had him hauled away in a squad car, bleeding, and booked him for resisting arrest. Davis had recently finished recording Kind of Blue, the best selling jazz album of all time, and he’d recorded a program for Armed Forces Radio that day. Two police officers, one of whom was drunk, were involved in the incident. Davis later explained that he’d just walked “a white girl named Judy out to get a cab,” which probably enraged his attacker. Fast forward to 2016, when NBA basketball player Thabo Sefolosha was standing outside a nightclub when he was tackled by five NYPD officers, one of whom broke his leg with a baton. The incident was captured on video by a bystander. A cop had told Sefolosha and his friends to “get the fuck out of the street” after they were clearing out a nightclub where there had been a stabbing. Sefolosha and the officer had words. Suddenly, officers wrestled him to the ground and the one he had been arguing with slammed a baton down on his leg. The fracture was severe enough to require surgery, and Selosha couldn’t play ball for a year. The city paid a $4.5 million settlement after a jury acquitted him of resisting arrest. The city insisted the five officers were blameless, and they faced no punishment, which didn’t sit well with Sefolosha. “To get a settlement was a small victory. But big picture, it’s a small drop,” Sefolosha told ProPublica. “When are people going to be held accountable? You have to have repercussions or they’re going to do it over and over again.” The NYPD said in a statement that the department “carefully analyzes allegations in civil lawsuits and the corresponding evidence to assess the merits of cases.”