When I Was Pulled Over

I was pulled over on the afternoon of May 16, 2014 in the city of Madison in Madison County, Mississippi, and I was alone, en route to my office when I was driving through a mixed-use area – combination residential and business – and I didn’t realize I was speeding at the time until I looked up and saw the blue lights in my rear view and heard the siren. And then of course, I was nervous because I didn’t think I did anything wrong to be pulled over, but I didn’t realize that I was going almost 10 miles above the speed limit. It was posted 25 – actually, it was 30 – and I was driving 46 miles per hour. So I was pulled over for speeding.

I was in a pretty well-lit area, it was daytime, and I just didn’t want to argue. I pulled over, and I admitted that I was speeding, and the officer proceeded to write me a ticket. And I didn’t even bother asking for a warning because, after all, he clocked me speeding, and I didn’t want to argue.

So I just accepted the ticket and I went about my way, but I was very nervous because my phone died, my battery was really low, and I was trying to let my boss know that I was on my way back, but the phone died as I was being pulled over. So I didn’t know what would happen or if anything bad would happen. But the officer was a white man, younger than 40, and he was nice and courteous as he could be, and he just warned me my court date, and sent me on my way.

So that was my last time being pulled over – not the first time for speeding, but any time I do speed or break a traffic law, I accept the consequences, pay my fines, and keep it moving. But every time I get pulled over, it’s the same feeling: goose bumps, anxiety, and uncertainty over what could happen, especially being alone as a young black woman driving a vehicle.

- Terricha Phillips

Hi, my name’s Kevin, and the last time I was pulled over was about six weeks ago when I was living in Iowa. I was working on a presidential campaign this summer in a small town in southeast Iowa called Mount Pleasant, which is about a 45-minute-hour drive to Iowa City. On my last weekend on the campaign, I was going to Iowa City for my final goodbye with my team in the region. I went to Iowa City plenty of times that summer, but usually someone else was driving or someone was with me, but on this last day, I was driving myself up and I was talking to my friend on the phone — with Bluetooth, of course.

And, as I approached the city, I saw a bunch of exits that kind of sounded familiar, and I took one into what I found out was University Heights. And I don’t know if there’s a sign and I missed it because it was late at night or if it was a speed trap, but you go from doing like 80 on the highway to having to do literally 20 miles an hour in University Heights.

Moments after I pulled off the highway, I got pulled over and I hung up on my friend and I was genuinely like, ‘What’s gonna happen now? What am I being pulled over for? This is curious.’

Hey, my name is Dexter, I’m black, and I’m from southern California.

When I was in college, which was a few years ago now, a lot of friends used to make fun of me because I was really strict about how I drove. If you got in my car, you couldn’t ride without a seatbelt, I wouldn’t speed – I would never go over the speed limit – I wouldn’t make illegal U-turns, things like that. And so my friends would kind of joke with me and say, ‘Oh you’re a goodie two-shoes’ or whatever. Which is especially kind of funny for them, I guess, because I had this sports car which, it wasn’t expensive, but you know, I kept it clean and it looked nice.

And one of these friends who used to kind of poke fun at me – I won’t say what she was, but young lady my age, and I'll just say that she wasn’t black and she wasn’t brown. I don’t remember where we were going but it was after dark and I think picked her up from her place, we were driving, and I think we got about two blocks before we were pulled over.

So I saw the flashing lights and the sirens and I pulled over and they didn’t say I was speeding, they didn’t say tags were expired, anything like that, they just said they were checking, they were just checking, that’s what they said.

And they pulled the flashlight out, they shined it on me, they shined it on her, they asked if she was OK, and she said yeah. And then let me go once he saw my license and registration.

So I think she was a little confused, but we kept driving. And I think I got maybe another 10-15 blocks or so before I got pulled over again. Same thing happened — I wasn’t speeding, I wasn’t doing anything wrong, they just pulled over and they said they were just checking, this was a different officer. And again, I showed my driver’s license, I showed my registration, I was very police — ‘Yes sir, no sir’ — and eventually they said ‘OK. Sorry for taking up your time, go ahead.’

As I was driving, I realized that the person sitting next to me was shaking, and I looked over at her and she asked me, ‘Is this what happens? Is this what it’s like?’ And I didn’t really know how to answer her because yeah, it is. And black people, black men do get pulled over a lot for no reason, and I’d been profiled constantly, and it was to the point where actually it didn’t bother me anymore because I was so used to it. But it really affected her, she was actually furious — she was saying ‘I can’t believe they’d do this, this is wrong, we have to do something about this, can’t we call somebody, can’t we go anywhere.’

Maybe I was a little insensitive but I said no, I don’t think so – I can’t think of anything to do right now, let’s just go to wherever we’re going. And she started crying and I didn’t know what to do, and so we went wherever we were going – I don’t remember at this point – but she never rode with me anywhere ever again.

- Dexter Thomas 

I will commend this county policeman for taking reasonable and logic action to resolve a citizen’s problem. I only hope Ferguson and other low income black communities will receive reasonable police actions.

- Lynn Johnson 

The last time I had an interaction with law enforcement officers was a couple of years ago in Baltimore County, Maryland, where I reside. It was a late night, I was on my way to a McDonald’s to simply get some food, and I used my girlfriend’s car to drive to the McDonald’s.

This McDonald’s is less than a mile away from my residence. As I approached the traffic light — a red light — I noticed an officer pull up behind me. And I thought nothing of it at first, but then of course, being a person of color driving in the middle of the night, I knew that anything could happen. But again, I didn’t know if the officer was going to pull me over for some reason that I didn’t know, or let me go about my business.

I was committing no crimes, no traffic violations, I wasn’t doing anything wrong or intend to do anything wrong. But I know that all they need is a reason to pull you over with the hopes that they have some bigger issue to arrest you for or detain you for.

As I pulled into the McDonald’s drive-through, two officers turned on their squad car lights, and I stopped the vehicle. They approached the vehicle, and they asked me for the registration for the vehicle because for some reason, the registration wasn’t coming up in their database. I knew this to be false because I know that my girlfriend stays on top of that type of business. I also knew that the reason they pulled me over with such a false story was to get my I.D. in order to run it through their database to see if I had any type of outstanding warrants or anything like that — a bigger reason for them to, again, detain or arrest me.

This is all too common, and this is how most traffic stops begin. This is why most officers pick the low-hanging fruit to use a traffic stop to try to justify means to another end.

I waited patiently in the car and I felt embarrassed. I felt somewhat fearful — again, not because I was doing anything wrong, but just because of the history of law enforcement’s interaction with people of color.

The officers then came back to the car and told me that there was a mistake made, the registration checked out, but they were looking for people that were stealing cars in the area. And immediately felt like I was profiled, which is exactly what it was. And it just goes to show you that the issue of profiling is a big problem in our communities and police officers, law enforcement in general at large, need to learn how to deal with people of color and the communities that they police.

Had we had true community policing, those officers in that community would have known who I am, and would’ve had no reason to pull me over. But again, when you’re driving while black, that is justification enough for most law enforcement officials and agencies to feel as though they have unilateral authority to do what they do.

- Courtney

We were on a 4-lane divided highway and there was no other traffic around us.  We were travelling at around 65 mph and he was in front of me and in the left-hand lane, as cops like to be.  I was on cruise control, which I had carefully matched to his speed.

We came to a steep hill and his speed slackened; being on cruise control, my car moved ahead of his.  Well!  He did not like that AT ALL!  He swung in behind me and turned on his lights, so I pulled over.  He did the license-and-registration bit, but he was furious that I had passed him.

"You disrespected me!" he yelled.  "AND the law," he added after a moment, obviously as an afterthought.

My name is Danny, I am a black female, and I was pulled over by a white cop in a rural area of Arizona. 

I was relocating from California to Dallas by way of Vegas, so that’s why I was in the northern part of Arizona. It was a area where there were a lot of cops in the median, and so the speed limit went from 75 to 65 in a very short period, and that’s where I saw the cop, so when he pulled out behind me, I thought it was because I was speeding. But he was behind me for about a mile before he pulled me over. 

When he came up to the car, I rolled down all the windows and turned the ignition off, and had my hands on the steering wheel, and I kept thinking in my head, ‘I don’t want to die in Arizona.’ And so he said that I’m not getting a ticket, so I don’t have to worry about that, but the reason that he pulled me over was because I had a cell phone mount in the window underneath the rear view mirror, and that’s illegal in the state of Arizona. 

So I took it down immediately, and I figured that was going to be the end of it, but then he asked me for my license and registration, and he asked me to step out of the car, and come to his vehicle while he ran my information. And so, I stood there with my hands behind my back the whole time like I had handcuffs on because I didn’t want him to be uneasy, and I also stood about three feet away from him because the whole thing just made me really nervous. And so he asked me a series of questions about where I was coming from, how long I had been in L.A., how long I had been in Vegas, where I was going, why was I going to Dallas, where was I planning on staying when I was in Dallas, did I have any marijuana in the car, where did I stay when I was in L.A., where did I stay when I was in Vegas, did I have any marijuana in the car – that kept coming up a lot and he said the reason he kept asking me about the marijuana was because that area was a corridor that was known for drug trafficking from northern California to Dallas. 

And so after he ran my information and everything checked out, he told me that I was free to go, but do you mind if I search your car. And at that point, I told him that I don’t care what you do, you’re free to do whatever you want, just don’t shoot me. 

He said, ‘Oh my God, no, you’re free to go.’ 

So I think it kind of caught him off guard a little bit and made him a little nervous that I would think that, but I mean that’s just the reality of where we are right now. And so at that point he let me go, and I sat there for about 10-15 minutes before I even pulled off. But I didn’t have any more issues in Arizona and I definitely didn’t put the cell phone mount back up in the window. That was the last time I was pulled over.

- Danny

About a year ago, I was pulled over on a Monday night, about 9:30 p.m. after class. I had turned right, I had a green arrow, and I proceeded north, oblivious to the fact that a police officer was behind me. It took him about a mile or so before he pulled me over. When he did, we pulled into a parking lot, and he took my license and registration, took a look at it, and told me that he pulled me over for turning right on a red. I looked at him. 

I said, ‘No I didn’t. There was a green arrow.’ 

He said, ‘Oh. OK. I thought it was red.’ 

And that was pretty much it. He gave me my license and registration back, and said, ‘Have a good night.’ I thought it was strange. It was funny because I know if I wasn’t a white woman who looked very nonthreatening, the outcome might have been different. 

I probably would’ve had a ticket right now.

- Shelley

Hi, this is Valerie. I’m a 65-year-old white female, and the first time I was stopped by the police, I wasn’t actually driving, I was a passenger. This was in 1965, I was 15 years old on my way to a school dance on a first date with a young man who happened to be black. We were stopped in the city of Gardena, which is a small suburb right outside of Los Angeles. 

My first reaction when I saw the flashing red lights was confused, because I didn’t think we had done anything wrong. Once we pulled over, the police immediately went to the driver’s side of the car and very roughly pulled my friend out of the car, slammed him against the car, and handcuffed him. At this point, my confusion turned into fear — at no time did they ever tell us why they stopped us, and didn’t ask any questions, they were just being very rough with him and that was frightening. They then asked me if I was OK, and I said I was, so then they asked if my parents knew I was out with a Negro — that was their exact words — and I told them that my parents knew. They said they didn’t believe me, and for my safety and protection they were going to take me to the police station and call my parents to pick me up. 

They proceeded to question him in a very hostile, very demeaning, very disrespectful way, asking him questions about what he was doing in this neighborhood, and what he was doing with a white girl. The whole time, he was being very cooperative, very humble, very respectful to them, but that didn’t change how he was treated. The thing that struck me the most about his reaction is that he seemed, aside from being very humiliated, he seemed just very resigned to it. 

Of course, I realized later that this was probably because maybe this wasn’t a new experience for him, or maybe his parents had warned him that things like this might happen with the police. But for whatever reason, he just seemed very resigned. 

For me, I was just angry once it dawned on me the real reason why they had pulled us over, that it was just strictly racial profiling, and there was just no reason for the interaction to go the way it did. 

They took it to the police station, separated us, and called our parents, and I don’t know what ever happened to him because for whatever reason — out of embarrassment or whether his parents told him he couldn’t have contact with me — I never spoke to him again. I never saw him again. 

I’m OK from the experience. It did color my perception of police in a negative way permanently, but for him, what haunts me the most is how traumatic that experience must have been for him, and how many times did he have to go through that in his life. That haunts me to this day, and unfortunately, that was 50 years ago, and not much has changed. 

Thank you for listening to my story.

- Valerie Orange 

**This call contains explicit language**

Hi, this is Kate, a 21-year-old white girl from a small town in Texas. I don’t know how relevant this story is to your overall narrative, but in case it adds another layer, I thought I should share, so here it goes.

When I was in high school, I was this very bookish, nerdy, student-council loving dweeb with a really bad haircut who absolutely loved my school Spanish department. The department was led by two of the most passionate, inclusive, supportive people I’ve ever met in my life, and because these people were so supportive, they really facilitated my love of politics and let me do all of my class projects on minority representation in public policy. I know that sounds really nerdy, but seriously, that’s who I was.

When I turned 16, one of these beautiful people that taught me Spanish gave me a bumper sticker for my new-to-me junker that I’d saved up and bought all by myself. The sticker read, ‘Sí votamos, contamos,’ or in English, ‘If we vote, we count.’ I probably stuck the sticker on my junker’s back bumper, and continued my regular life.