Thread by @CornellWBrooks

Painful #DrivingWhileBlack Story

1) I visit a former US AG for advice on a law to help people with criminal records—which I didn’t have then. I get a parking ticket, which I forgot to pay. A policeman later pulls me over, demands cash $$, cuffs & arrests me for the old ticket...

2) Cashless, I ask to go to an ATM. He puts me cuffed in a police car and drives me to an ATM for cash to pay the ticket. He THEN drives me to the police station and cuffs me to a bench—with 1 arm free
—presumably since I wasn’t “threatening.”

3) After doing paperwork, the officer then says “We won’t fingerprint and mugshot you.” I was released, drove home, and worried EVERY mile, actually EVERY millimeter, of the way, “how does this arrest record affect my credibility as an advocate, my reputation as a minister?”

4) Days later, I reached out to a nationally prominent lawyer and secured the services of a very high priced law firm— to represent me in traffic court— not so much for the parking ticket,but the arrest.

5) Having been harassed, profiled, & tailed once in a parking lot, I know being professional & polite are not mitigating factors when #DrivingWhileBack . Hell, my eyeglasses were apparently a dangerous weapon—when an officer once reached for his gun when I reached for my glasses.

6) Most of these events occurred years ago. They are still expensive, not merely in time or money, but as a “dignity tax.” Your dignity as a person is taxed when police treat you like a nonperson. They can’t take away your dignity, but even the attempted theft is offensive.

7) My experiences with police, while occasionally dangerous, are relatively mild—compared to so many others. But what about my sons and your children? #DrivingWhileBlack is the hashtag normalization of traffic stops as dignity assaults & deadly attacks.

8) Last point, fresh out of law school, I once read a brief arguing that racial profiling was legal. 30 years later , I STILL remember the racist dignity assault wrapped in legalese—a moral obscenity wrapped in legal poetry. BS.