The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘A Routine Traffic Stop’

Posted on | January 18, 2023 | Comments Off on ‘A Routine Traffic Stop’

Keyonis Cisqo Langston

Eau Claire, Wisconsin, is more than 300 miles from Chicago, and it’s almost a five-hour drive — if you’re doing the speed limit, that is. On the other hand, if you’re doing 110 mph in a late-model Dodge Charger, the trip won’t take nearly as long. Except, of course, if you get pulled over by the cops, which is what happened last year to Keyonis Langston:

A state trooper saw a vehicle traveling east on I-94 July 10 at mile marker 58 in Eau Claire County hitting a speed of 104 mph.
The trooper activated his emergency lights but the vehicle failed to stop. The driver of the vehicle then turned off the headlights in an attempt to elude officers.
The vehicle then increased its speed to near 135 mph, passing vehicles and semi trucks on both the right and left shoulders. The vehicle swerved between both lanes of traffic, almost crashing with other vehicles on multiple occasions.
The pursuit was then terminated.
A pursuit with this same vehicle was again initiated in Monroe County, where it was involved in a crash.
The vehicle eventually left I-94, turned down a dead end road and the driver left the vehicle.
After a brief foot chase, officers took the driver into custody and identified him as Langston.
If convicted, Langston could be sentenced to up to 18 months in prison.

The pursuit and subsequent capture of Langston was recorded on police dashcam and bodycam video, which was recently released:

Langston had neither a valid driver’s license nor insurance, but these were trivial matters in comparison to fleeing/eluding an officer, which is a Class I felony in Wisconsin. After his arrest, Langston became hysterical, shouting, “I’m not a criminal,” babbling about a girlfriend in Minneapolis that just broke up with him, while asserting that he actually did have a license and insurance, but “when it pops up, it says invalid,” and could he please call his mom? After seeing this, I became curious, because I suspected that this wasn’t Langston’s first time at the rodeo, if you get my drift. Like, a previously law-abiding citizen doesn’t just suddenly decide to lead police on a 100-mph chase.

You see that mug shot? Not from his Wisconsin arrest. It’s from Chicago, where in February 2022 — just five months before his arrest in Wisconsin — Keyonis was busted after he ran a stop sign and, in addition to that infraction, was also charged with (a) driving on a suspended license, (b) driving an uninsured vehicle, and (c) multiple counts of resisting arrest/obstructing an officer. Nor was that his first encounter with law enforcement. In 2018, when he was 21, Keyonis Langston was arrested in Joliet for “speeding 26 to 34 mph above the speed limit.”

All of these arrests were mere traffic violations, you may say, and we have no reason to believe that Keyonis was really a criminal. Maybe he was just an urban version of the Dukes of Hazzard:

Just good old boys,
Never meanin’ no harm.
Beats all you never saw,
Been in trouble with the law since the day they was born.

If it hadn’t been for that high-speed pursuit through Wisconsin, and the video being posted to one of my favorite “real police action” YouTube channels, I never would have heard of Keyonis, who was facing up to 18 months in prison for fleeing and eluding. But there won’t be a trial and he’ll never go to prison, because Keyonis was from Chicago, where he became a statistic this past Thanksgiving weekend:

Eight people have been killed and 25 others wounded in shootings so far over the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend. . . .
Thursday night, two men were killed in separate shootings just over an hour apart and about five miles from each other on the South Side.
Keyonis Langston, 25, was in the 8000 block of South Vernon Avenue when someone shot him in the head just before 8 p.m., authorities said. About 9:20 p.m., Randle Roby, 28, was found fatally shot on a sidewalk in the 100 block of West 112th Street. He suffered a gunshot wound to the face and abdomen and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Beats all you ever saw . . .

Y’all drive safely. It’s dangerous out there on the road.



 

 

Category: Chicago, Crime, Wisconsin

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