The police excesses have become such a trending theme in the USA today to the extent that the existing legislation has proven inadequate. Sample this: A West Virginia House of Delegates member listens  in to a conversation between her son and grandson about how to handle the interaction with the police when asked to pull over. This sounds familiar. She had had that same conversation with her old folks long time ago.

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This inspires her to introduce a bill on a law that will train teens on how to interact with the police. The bill would later be signed into law by the Virginia Governor, Terry McAuliffe so that young drivers in Virginia can read up the law and avoid becoming one of the statistics in the police brutality stories.

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In an interview, Jeion Antonia Ward says that she had that conversation long time ago with her sons and it was surprising that the conversation was still necessary in a 21st United Sates.

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“Be humble and respectful. Obey the police commands and under no circumstance should you anger the police”…these were the words every black family in the US has to tell their sons lest they get the sad call from the police that their son had been shot in an altercation with the police.

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Sudden movements, including reaching for the driving license may be interpreted by the police officers as reaching for the gun and such incidents almost always result in the black person being shot.

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It is this information that Ward wanted institutionalized in the State’s drives code so that every kid, white or black, would know what to do when the police stops them. Every cop and driver must learn the code by heart so that there is no room for misinterpretation that the police have used before to deny justice to their victims.

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The law becomes operational on July 1, 2017 and provides that every public school in Virginia should teach their students the police enforcement procedures whenever they are stopped. The law also provides for all the actions that a driver should take at traffic stops. The law also puts forward the rules of engagement between the police officer and the driver.

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The law gives the state police and the state education board the mandate to develop a curriculum so that all students going through Virginian education system would get a chance to learn the driving code in the state.

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Obviously there have been similar previous attempts and that’s why many pundits have been skeptical about its efficacy in saving the black men from police brutality. They say that it is not the inadequacy of legal provisions but lack of compliance to existing laws that has led to so many deaths among the young black men.

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A good example of the blatant way in which police officers ignore laid down procedures is the case of Philando Castile who was killed even after obeying every police command. The guy even informed the police that he had a concealed weapon which he was licensed to carry. He was shot as his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds witnessed. It is as if the police did not care what she was going to say because they are used to get away with criminal acts.

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Following the death of her son, Valerie Castille would bemoan her loss on CNN saying that she had strictly instructed her son to comply with everything the police told him to do. “As it turns out, even compliance was not good enough,” she concludes.

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Legislating interactions with the police is good, but unless there is a complete overhaul of the officers’ moral compass, the law will just be like many other pieces of legislation that were written but have never been implemented.