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Racial profiling in Missouri

SassyWho

I wrote about this last week, and as far as I have seen there has not been enough national press on this case yet. To refresh your memory, this is what happened:

For the second time this year a pregnant woman of color was mistreated by Missouri police officers:

Hayes is a Kansas City school principal in charge of her church’s Sunday school. Her two small children were in the Jeep with her when officers started yelling at her to show her hands, drop her keys out the window, put her hands on her head and get on her knees.
“Then they said to lay on my stomach, and I tried to tell them I couldn’t lay on my stomach because I am pregnant and they said lay on your stomach so I laid on my stomach because I was terrified of my life,” she said.


Here’s the video, notice how surprised the cop was when she informed him that she was a school principle. As I said at here, after admittedly having a disturbing record of racial profiling, Missouri has actually gotten worse since a fairly aggressive legislation has been in place.

Please post this, blog it, write about it! This woman was pulled over because of mistaken identity, regardless the treatment by police officers, even for the crime of which they were investigating was abusive and illegal.

19 thoughts on Racial profiling in Missouri

  1. This appeared to be a two-cruiser stop.

    The dashcam video is from the second cruiser, not the one directly behind the Jeep that was stopped.

    Two questions — (a) didn’t both cruisers have cameras? and if so, (b) what does the lead cruiser’s camera footage show?

  2. Craig, I am not sure…. but the history of racial profiling in the state combined with their up-front yet reluctant behavior it’s been suspect. It’s not unusual nor surprising.

  3. Wow, that dashcam video was so upsetting. (And good point, Craig — how come the dashcam of the front car has not been released? Hearing only the audio, I can imagine how much worse the visuals must have been.)

    I can only begin to imagine the terror that poor woman felt — forced to leave her kids in the car and lay on her belly while huge tractor trailer trucks screamed by just a few feet away.

    EVEN if she was the “JCPenney thief”…and of course she wasn’t…but even if she was a petty thief — how can that kind of brutal treatment on the shoulder of a freeway be permissible?

    Then listening to one of the officers schmooze with her and try to butter her up after he hears she is a school principal…sickening. Her shock and horror were palpable.

  4. I watched the video was frustrated like Craig that they chose to release the footage of the rear car and not the front car directly behind the Jeep. I’m sure the view wasn’t too pleasant for the PD.

    As it was, I could feel my blood curdling as I heard the woman sobbing and the officers attempting to console her and her child, once apparently they’re aware that they’ve made an error (because they aren’t customarily so polite otherwise).

    Pathetic that somehow their apologies will make up for the trauma and public humiliation of an innocent mother and her defenseless child. As usual, I’m disgusted with this behavior (on part of white bigots everywhere, especially those who enforce their bigotry with their authority) and the unquenched anger than comes from a sense of helplessness gets stoked a little more.

  6. This looked to me like a standard felony stop, but of course a felony stop is an intense experience for the person being arrested. That’s why such procedures are normally reserved for cases in which there’s good reason to believe that the driver is a felon.

    These reasons include driving a car registered to a felon, and driving a car that’s been reported stolen. So I was shocked to find that Hayes was stopped because her car resembled one that had been used during some recent car break-ins.

    First of all, a car break-in is not the sort of crime that warrants this sort of procedure. Caution, yes. But not a stop in which officers have their weapons pointed at the arrestee.

    Also, “driving a car that looks kind of like a car that has been used by petty thieves” is not enough evidence to warrant this sort of procedure. I find it hard to believe that these policemen would have drawn their guns on a white person in the situation.

  8. Ach! Mixing up Mississippi and Missouri. How embarassing. I’d make a snide comment about it being an easy mistake to make, but at this point I’m worried that it would be a slander on Mississippi.

  9. I don’t know about Missouri, but where I live only one police car on the whole fleet has video. State trooper cars are a different matter. That is to say, it’s quite possible that the front car wasn’t equipped with video but the back car was.

  12. Roy, Tony is a blog friend of mine, and he has quite a few knuckle-draggers who visit his site, that is probably expected since he is one of the most visable bloggers in Missouri/Kansas.

  13. The woman is suing the police department. As of yesterday the Independence, MO PD would not give her a copy of the video, even though all the TV stations in KCMO have aired it several times. The area she was shopping in is a very “white” area and very rich, so of course any black person driving through must be committing a crime.

    While the cops were “questioning” her, her children were left unattended inside the car. How many car thieves bring their kids along for the ride?

    And, Independence, MO has the money for a dash cam for every car.

    Both of the pregnant incidents occured in the KCMO metro area. The KCMO metro area has a HUGE race problem, not a problem with pregnant women. No one has even mentioned that these stops were made because the women are black, one an Afrian immigrant the other African American.

    Update on the immigrant woman, both cops were fired.

  14. Michelle, the KC metro does have a massive racial problem, and the profilling reflects that.

    The cops were fired, but weren’t charged with anything. As far as I know Missouri does have a Fetal Protection Act, where are the pro-lifers? Her civil rights were violated, and she miscarried in the process… isn’t that what they give as evidence for the need of these laws?

  15. Where are the pro-lifers?

    —

    The issue isn’t framed properly for them. Headline should read: innocent fetus held at gunpoint by local police.

  16. Well, I live in the KC Metro, so this isn’t surprising. The Indepedence PD is ALWAYS stoping black motorists- I drive 70 and 470 through there a lot, and I would say the majority of traffic stops I have witnessed have been black motorists. And I know that profiling IS an issue, as one day I was driving through (white woman in late-model family car), in the right lane on I-470 over the I-70 interchange, and another car (young black man, beat up Monte Carlo) was in the left lane. We were BOTH going the same speed when an IPD cruiser merged from I-70, whipped out from behind ME, and nailed the guy in the Monte Carlo.

    This from the police force in the self-avowed “Meth Capital” of the USA– a place where the majority of meth cookers and users are WHITE. Hmmm….

  17. I skipped over to Tony’s to point out to the posters who still are not walking upright that I have been stopped twice, once at 2 a.m., where there were actual problems with my tags or registration, and I was let go without even a ticket, when my car should have been impounded in the case of the expired registration. I am not stupid enough to think that my white skin had nothing to do with this. Really I think the cops just would not dare make a young white woman lie face down on the asphalt by the side of a highway unless she had tried to shoot them. One thing about 9/11 is that I THOUGHT we might have realized as a country that busting up black people for percieved drug use and other petty crimes was perhaps not the greatest use of law enforcement resources, but that seems to have worn off.

  19. LEO’s use their personal safety as an excuse for this type of behavior. You often hear them say: “Nothing is going to keep me from going to home to my family at the end of my shift.” Basically, they have a dangerous job and they’re going to do whatever it takes to survive. Unfortunately, this includes drawing guns on anyone driving a car that’s similar to one used in a felony crime. I think this is ridiculous. Do I think cops go overboard when they stop a feeling motorist and draw down on him? No. But their behavior during this simple traffic stop was totally unprofessional. I’m very happy she’s suing.

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