And keep those vaccination cards handy. All indica- tions are that you will need them to prove that you have been immunized against COVID-19. According to some, they are the ticket back to the good old days and yet another reason to get vaccinated,– that’s unless you live in Texas or Florida where they are being banned.

In what was last month’s other big news story, a jury in Minneapolis came to the right verdict in a decision that is reverberating in police departments across the nation following a case that sparked the nation’s most intense reckoning on racial issues since the civil rights movement. This, as Americans are finding out just how deadly traffic stops can be for black men, and though less frequently black women, with Daunte Wright among the latest fatal casualties.

A report by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Office of the Inspector General, published last year found traffic stops of whites (and some other groups) were most likely to be related to how the suspects were driving, while Black and Hispanic people were most likely to be stopped for having expired vehicle registration docu- ments, or some other regulatory or equipment violation.

Philando Castile was stopped 52 times resulting in 86 minor traffic offenses before he was ultimately shot to death in a traffic stop in 2016 that turned tragic in less than a minute.

We understand that police are human and make mis- takes. So too are the people they stop. Caution is always advised. Abuse is not acceptable.

Still, there are those who would argue that the jury had to find him guilty to stave off riots characterizing the verdict as mob justice even as one columnist ironically wrote: “a guilty man was railroaded.”

The truth of the matter was a not so perfect man was killed that day, despite people pleading with a heartless officer to take his knee off his neck so he could breathe.