How I Gained Street Cred: A Southern Belle Run-In With The Law
Note: I am not smiling. This is my resting nice face. My, I am uncomfortable and don’t like it face.
I was cruising along, jamin’ out to Taylor Swift. With the road to myself and blue skies, my mind wandered back to the open road of the Autobahn, hair being whipped around by the wind in my German, drop-top, out pacing other little sports cars…you know the type… the loud ones with horses on the hood. Just as I imagined giving my big American smile as I passed a grumpy face Swabbish German, I was brought back to reality when I saw police car driving the other direction on the highway. I immediately checked my speedometer, sighed with the relief that I hadn’t hit 100 and pulled over to the side. Homeboy didn’t even have to flash his lights. I knew I was caught. And although, being 20 minutes from my Kentucky home and a policeman’s daughter, I probably could have sweet talked my way out of this one I knew I was deserving of a ticket. My dad even encouraged a name drop. I didn’t. Besides, I actually caught a break. He could have written me up for a higher speed but showed mercy. The whole encounter took about 10 minutes and I was back on the road. Having to pay a $216 for 80 in a 70 still made me bummed for several miles. Then I remembered the great deal I got that saved me $600 on my rental car. My budget was made more flexible with the savings. So even with the ticket, I was within my travel budget. Then I wasn’t bummed any more. Welcome home to America where speed limits are strictly enforced. No more 150 on the Autobahn.
Fast forward 50 hours.
I’m cruising along with a group of at least eight cars in both driving lanes in Texas. A police car appears. Even though his lights aren’t flashing cars start moving over into the right lane. Well, since I’m not passing, I wait for an opening, made available after a semi truck (or lory as the Brits call them) exited to move over to the right lane. The police drives my the side even with the side of my car then falls back…right behind me. I thought it was odd until the police car exited the freeway. I shrugged it off. Plausible explanation…he just wanted to exit. But then, at the very next entrance ramp, the police car reappears back behind me! Now I’m thinking this is odd. Then I’m even more confused when his lights turn on behind me. I pull over wondering why I was stopped. The cop comes over to my passenger side asks for license and registration. I had over the rental car’s registration and my license. Under my diva shades my eyebrows are raised waiting to learn why I was pulled over. “You were going a little fast back there,” the police who doesn’t appear to be much older than me says. “How fast is a little fast,” I asked. “A little fast,” he responds back and takes my info to his car. Out of the pack of cars, I was in the back and the slowest of the bunch, yet I was the one pulled over…for going “a little fast.” Seemed weird, weird, weird. And he wouldn’t give me a satisfactory answer as to how fast or why I was pulled over. I took to Facebook to ask the masses if I was just profiled and to document.
Now, to say I’ve been pulled over before would be an understatement. Call me Ricky Bobby ‘cus I like to go fast. I’ve never denied any instance prior to this time was justified. This cop’s driving practice on the highway was sketchy. Had any other driver pulled up to the side of me, then slipped behind me to follow, exited the freeway only to get right back on behind me at the next entrance ramp, I would have called the police on them. But how can you call the police on the police? Then not giving me a specific speed even after asking seemed off. Plus I was calling shenanigans on going “a little too fast.” No way! After my $216 fine I had been contentiously on cruise control. Besides, I was moving with the flow of traffic. Cars ahead of me, behind me, and to the side of me all going a steady pace. I’m pretty confident the common practice on the highway is to cruise at 9 or 10 mph over the speed limit. In fact, from a chart my dad showed me back in high school, the fines don’t even start ’til you hit 10 mph over the limit. From my perspective, I was pulled over for no reason and dude was up to something.
When he returned he asked if I was in a rental. I said it was. He asked where I started my trip. Well, this was a difficult question. Technically my trip started in the Middle East (Southwest Asia). I flew into Baltimore. Went to Alabama, met a friend in Chattanooga, flew to Maine and was road tripping the US. I told him Shreveport this morning but overall in Maine. A bit of over sharing but I was quite proud and excited about this adventure. He asked where I was going. I told him California. That’s when the conversation started going south. “Where are you headed and where are you coming from” are standard police pull over convo. So is “Why are you in a rush?” But the questions kept coming. He asked if I still lived at the address on my card. I explained it was my parents address then I let it be known that I was in the military hoping it would help explain my nomadic movements. It’s summertime, it’s PCS (Permanent Change of Station) season, vacation season, going to college season. He asked for my mil ID and ask what I did for the military. No one ever understands what I do so I kept it 6th grade level. I work with computers. I explained.
He asked why I was taking highway 30 instead of some other one that I didn’t recognize. Since I was fallowing a GPS I really wasn’t aware of all the other highway options or names of highways. I shrug but I’m still wondering why I was the car pulled over out of the pack for going “A little fast” when I didn’t believe I was and really confused why I’m getting the slew of questions. Why does this dude seem suspicious of little ol’ me. Every other police has issued a citation or sent me on my way with a verbal warning. Sometime during the exchange I have my dad on the phone to listen to this random line of questioning. He was aggressively asking questions and I was answering with suspicion. He mentioned that I added two days on to my trip by taking that route. I shrugged. Not seeing the problem here. “Why,” he demanded. Why not, I thought. Speed isn’t my objective. But answered “Because it’s fun.” He repeated my statement back to me. He apparently didn’t like it. This guy can’t answer why he pulled me over but asks me about 20 questions. I’m not sure if he cannot hear or if he’s intentionally being rude but he keeps raising his voice and saying, “What!?” He’s from the south. there’s no reason I cannot get an “excuse me ma’am?” if he cannot hear or understand. He left. The last time I was asked random questions by a strange man, the guy “coincidentally” showed up at my work. And started calling me at work. He was a man in uniform also. Then police came back, this time on the drivers side, knocks on the window and told me to step out of the car.
As a girl who has been pulled over in dang near every state south of the Mason-Dixon line for one reason or another, this was absolutely abnormal. So I ponder if I should dial 911 for help and verification or my dad. I wind up back on the phone with my dad to see if this was within the realm normal procedures. Dad tells me to comply. But now all that I’m thinking of is the 2004 movie, Crash where a black woman is sexually assaulted by a cop after being asked to step out of the car for no reason.
Since my road trip began 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri was shop and killed by police. Eric Garner was placed in a choke hold until he died after he broke up a fight. Then there was the NYC breastfeeding death hoax that so many believed to be plausible. I have the memories of Edmund Perry, Cary Ball jr., Robert Cameron Redus, Kimwni Gray, kendrec McDade, Timothy Stansbury, Jr., Victor Steen, and Oscar Grant. I recall a black female honor student in the 90s being killed by police.
On top of the statistic that a black person is killed by police every 28 hours in America, all my parent’s safety warnings start racing through my mind. I am a woman, traveling solo being forced by a male in a position of authority, with a gun, to get out of the safety of my vehicle. I’m thinking I’m going to get gunned down on the side of a Texas highway. Or sexually assaulted in some way. And then the police will say I, the intimidating, 5 foot 4 and a quarter inch angry black woman, provoked it. I, of course, will be dead and unable to give my account. It was then that I was relieved I was wearing capris instead of my usual summer sundress. These britches weren’t coming off without a struggle. People who only met me in passing will be quick to give the media character witness accounts that I’m so respectful of authority and nice, and sweet, and not aggressive. I thought of the headlines, “Air Force Officer killed by police on the way to teach at university” or “Police’s Daughter Shot by Police.” “Officer returns from a year deployment to be gunned down by cops in Texas.” OMG Why am I out of my vehicle!?
The officer asks if he can search my car. I say no. Pretty sure the Red Coats started a war by violating colonists with unwarranted search and seizure. Patriots died 200 years ago so I wouldn’t have to endure what they endured. Or at least that’s what I learned on my road trip while visiting Boston. Why on Earth am I gunna let some random dude raffle through my personal belongings? He says fine, he’ll call the K-9 unit. So really it was an ultimatum. Let me search your car or I’m calling dogs to search anyway. Like the Salem Witch Hunts: Admit that you are a witch so we can burn you at the stake or we are going to tie you up then throw you in a river to see if you sink. I’d just visited the historic site of the massacres a week ago. He thinks I do drugs!?! Me!! Someone who has never done drugs of any sort in my life. And so we wait. I’m standing between my car and his in shock and offended the guy thinks I have drugs! Then I consider that he could plant drugs on me just like in the news! And I’m going to lose my job and future employment prospects. And I call my dad back. I think the two of them should talk. I encourage the police to read this blog if he needed proof or explanation to why I was driving this route. He disgustedly says he doesn’t want to read my blog or talk to my daddy because he’s talking to me. Now I just think he is rude and mean and I start documenting via Facebook. If I’m left dead on the side of the road my family and friends will need information on where I am and the police car’s plate. He sees this happening.
The fella gets out of the car again to tell me that all the information I’ll need will be on the warning he is going to give me. I ask if his supervisor’s contact info is on it. He gives me the number to a fella named Mike that I take down in my phone. The sounds of the highway are much too loud for me to start another phone call. I mean I could hardly hear my dad. The dogs take forever to come. The police starts talking to me like a normal person.
“Don’t you think it’s a bit weird for a single woman to take this route to get to California. You just added two days to your trip”. He keeps emphasizing this for some reason. Well actually I don’t think it’s weird. Military people travel all the time and sometimes those military members are women. The military doesn’t issue us travel companions. People in my social circles take cross country road trips all the time. Kate and Suze both, at separate times, drove from Georgia to Colorado. Katie took a cross-country road journey from California to DC. “Bacon” just took a similar route from Alabama to Nevada. When I lived in Europe I went to the Czech Republic from Stuttgart, Germany by going through Switzerland, Belgium, and Poland. Yes, it did add seven days to what could have been a four hour drive. I could make lists for days of all the military people who travel cross country. As for the route…what difference does it make? Why would I ever consider what a cop in Texas would consider odd when making my route? Maybe if I was living in Germany in the late 1930s or in Texas in the 1960s when the movements of certain peoples were restricted, but today? Why is it suspicious that an American is traveling in her own country!?
The whole trailing me, then getting off the highway, then back on was out of the norm. Not saying how fast I was clocked when asked was out of the norm. Asking me a lot of random, suspicious, accusatory questions but not answering me when I asked how fast I was going was out of the norm. Telling me to get out of the car was out of the norm.
We both calm down a bit after we both get some understanding as to why I’m suspicious of him and he is suspicious of me. The police’s perspective, drug cartels use women in rental cars to move drugs from the Mexican boarder to clear across the country. And I was coming from Maine with lots of luggage. He says I’m nervous, face twitching, hands shaking. And that’s not normal for people not doing wrong. It is normal for me when I’m amidst a confrontation. Happens when I think I’m going to be raped or killed or kidnapped. He said people carrying drugs don’t drive fast. They try to blend in, drive the speed limit, hands at 10 and 2. He says he pulls people over and has them step out of the car all day every day. It’s not weird for him. I explain yes, if they are going 20 over. I think, why on Earth would drug runners use black women knowing they are more likely to get pulled and searched?
It’s then that he says I was clocked at 69 in a 65. Four MPH over the speed limit! Four! All this for four extra miles traveled in an hour more than I was supposed to. What is out of the norm is to be pulled over for going 4 mph over the speed limit. Who has time to pull over every car going 4mph over?! If I were in shape, it would take me all of 23 minutes to run that distance. Were talking about a 5.5K over the allotted amount of kilometers traveled in an hour. Jay-Z freakin’ wrote a song about this!!!
I have a shared experience with Jay-Z?!? Say what!? Now, I have lived dang near every Taylor Swift song. Like Taylor, I sat in class next to redheaded girl with a three-syllable name when I was 15 who was my best friend and laughed at other girls who thought they were so cool. I have a boy that wouldn’t let me drive is stupid ol’ S-10. I have a couple folks I’d like to dedicate “Mean” to (here’s you patherette squad). And Twenty Two is just as valid at 28 — it’s my “happy, free, confused in the best way” anthem. But a hip hop song? I usually like the doing the hand movements to the catchy beat but I cannot identify with most experiences in rap songs…until now. In 99 Problems Jay-Z knew a warrant was needed. The police held him until dogs came, just like me. But he was a legit drug dealer. Here I am an over-educated Air Force Officer trying to get to her next duty station after a year deployment and I’m in the same situation. I try to hide that I feel that this is all ridiculous.
In the police car watching dogs sniff my rental
He asks if I’d like to sit in his car out of the heat. I do. And we talk. He said he’s just doing his job. He does drug interdiction, not regular city police patrol. The highway we’re on is used to run drugs to the border all the time. He says he thought the military usually flies its members and that I could have gotten in trouble and kicked out the military but retained the ID. (Then why ask for the ID if it wasn’t proof enough). The tone has changed. I get the sense he’s just a regular guy wanting to get home to his sweetheart and babies. But he is preventing me from reaching my best friend’s house whom I haven’t seen in three years and her baby that was born while I was living overseas. He asks why the storage trunk in my back seat had a lock on it. I explained because I shipped it in the mail from overseas. The others had been at my parent’s house. We talk about my travels. He didn’t think he’d like NYC because he was used to all the land and grass like we were surround by. I told him Maine was similar but not hot and humid. He talked about the deadliest catch being filmed there.
It’s been over an hour from my initial stop when the dog gets there. The dog runs around the car but then slows down in the back then climbs up and peers in the front passenger window. My heart sinks. “Oh goodness” I think. But it is a rental car. I have no clue what’s been in it or how clean it is. The dog handler tells me his dog “sat.” I understand that. I’ve seen military dogs sit for bombs. Now they have probable cause.
I’ve got five police officers there. The police explains the process. He says he needs to get my stuff out and have the dog sniff the individual packages. They open doors, pop the truck and lay out all my belongings. I’ve got two storage trunks in my trunk and another two in the back seat plus two suitcases and a cute leather duffle from Florence that I get complimented on all the time. I wonder if they are going to break their backs lifting these things. They are heavy and my necessities until my household goods get shipped to my new home. I watch them examine my combat boots and cute strappy wedges both laying freely in my trunk of my car.
The young officer emerges from my passenger side with a little baggie. I know instantly it’s my Extra Strength Motrin. It’s got the prescription label on it and everything. The military hands out “vitamin M” for every ailment from sucking chest wounds to hemorrhoids (I kid…a little.. but we do Motrin like the dad in My Big Fat Greek Wedding does Windex. It’s a cure all). But my heart sinks when I see it. Does this fella think it’s cocaine?! I explain. He says he’s never seen it packaged that way. I continue to photo document because, I still think this is ridiculous for four MPH over the limit.
Amazingly when the dog sniffled my luggage, he “sits” on the one trunk with a pad lock. The very one that the young officer asked me about earlier while we waited in the car. He asks me to unlock. I do. And watch him raffle through fruit loops, pop corn, a cute Italian purse from Florence, my hair supplies, my cutesy bathroom organization caddy, books, and lemon pepper spice (hey, I don’t know how long it will take me to find a home and I’ve been living out of a suitcase for over a year). Well the folks find noting but act confused as to what the dog smelled. They emphasized that they didn’t think I was a bad person just wanted asked questions pertaining to the trunks’ whereabouts for training. I told them all I knew was that I put the trunk in the mail and picked it up in Shreveport’s post office (sent the Air Force base there) that morning. No idea what it came in contact with in between. They all said they respected the military and what we do for the country. I get a written warning that simply states “over the speed limit” and sent me on my way. I later find out from my dad that dogs can be made to sit so police can have probable cause.
I drove off and crossed the boarder to Oklahoma 20 minutes later not feeling bummed like every other ticket. More shocked. Violated. Embarrassed. I wondered how all the nosey passerbys were judging the situation. I wondered how many cars with white drivers passed smirking that five police were tied up with me while they had a trunk full of illegal substances. I kept trying to understand the police’s position. I recalled the Fresh Prince episode when Carlton gave police the benefit of the doubt that he and Will were pulled over and arrested out of concern, but Will and Uncle Phil knew the deal. The police never said he found me suspicious because I was black but kept emphasizing solo female. A solo female fits the profile of a drug runner. So I was profiled, but not racially. I felt a little relieved for a moment. I was gender profiled. But is that any better? I got pulled over for being a girl!? In America!? You know who else pulls people over for being a girl? Saudi Arabia. Supposedly the only country in the world where woman are not allowed to drive. But apparently here in Texas women cannot drive alone. Especially with my Kentucky plates, I was a little bit too far away from the kitchen. Welcome back home to America were everyone is paranoid that everyone else is going to get them. Why was I pulled over for going 69 in a 65 in the first place? Before getting grilled with questions to which the police found suspicious? He didn’t know my cross country road trip before he pulled me over. He didn’t know my travel route before pulling me over. Out of all the other cars moving faster, why did I get pulled over? Why was I chosen out of the pack to be pulled over in the first place!? I was a few miles away from Texas Women’s University and Texas Christian University. I could have just as easily been an out of state college kid. He perceived me to exhibit suspicious behavior. But I wasn’t showing suspicious behavior until I suspiciously got pulled over.
This stop put me drastically behind schedule. I was supposed to meet my friend, Dillion, at our Alma matrer, the University of Oklahoma, for a lunch cookout but that was long over. She needed to tend to her dimpled toddler and husband. I was supposed to have dinner with four friends in Wichita but it was dang near 10 pm by the time I made it to town. One couple has an infant so late nights are a bust for them. The police search screwed this whole social engagement up. Now I would have to travel some distance in the dark increasing my vulnerability.I wondered what would have happened if I didn’t have the trump cards of a military ID or a daddy in the police force. Or if I wasn’t documenting. My military uniforms being sprawled along the highway may have saved me. Then again, the military is the reason I was on my way to California in the first place. If this can happen to me…a girl who considers her first time living in the hood was living across the street from enlisted dorms (sorry y’all…I got some bougie in me) Heaven help the black people from a less economically privileged backgrounds. this one time was traumatizing enough. I absolutely understand Eric Gardner being irritated that this sort of intrusion happened to him regularly.
What could I learn from this? What could I have done differently? Certainly don’t stray too far from the kitchen. Take a chaperon. Maybe not tell the whole story. Maybe if I would have said Shreveport to Wichita I could have avoided this. Maybe some emotional maturity on my part not to react to the police’s hostility. Overall I think some communication skills and training on the police’s part…the professional who pulls over on the highway everyday…could have avoided it. Telling me how fast right off instead of ambiguity. Not being sketchy trailing me in the car. Communicating why he was asking his questions first off. A Gender-studies and African-American studies class would have shed light on the historical trauma of interactions between police and my demographic. Recognizing that the stretch of highway I was on was in-between two major Military Bases. It would let him know my behavior was justifiably nervous. I cannot control how he behaves and I controlled myself with dignity and poise to the best of my ability, but the body reacts differently.
My phone started blowing up with friends calling to check on me. Facebook comments were multiplying. My mom said she was sick enough to vomit when she saw my posts. My Redheaded BFF’s (the one I was trying to see in Wichita) mom just thought it was horrible. One conversation I had asked what was their probable cause for searching. I answered, “Being a solo female taking an odd route.” Because that’s what the police emphasized. Unacceptable!
“Do you think your white female friends have ever had this happen to them?” Someone asked. I tried to imagine about 10 different girls standing on the side of that road. I wondered if they’d go their whole life without appearing suspicious to someone. My redheaded friend in Wichita did say she was searched by our hometown police because she and our blond friend were sitting in a McDonald’s parking lot without McDonald’s food back in high school. The blonde’s dad called to complain later. At least the two were together to be witnesses of mischief for each other. I recalled a friend (black male) being so upset he was hand cuffed while a cop searched his things on a highway. Now, not only could I sympathize, I could relate. A white female Air Force officer said her truck was searched with her permission while she was PCSing near the Mexican boarder in Arizona as well. One of my black, male military officer friends said his car always gets searched every single time he get’s pulled over. I got outpourings of black male friends who said it’s happened to them at least once. Out of all the white people I knew — keeping in mind the sea of whiteness I grew up in…keeping in mind I didn’t have a single black friend until college (meaning every black person I associate with is college educated) only three had been searched by police. Yet when it came to black male peers, all Air Force officers, into the teens revealed to me that they’d been searched during a traffic stop. That doesn’t include other ridiculous over reactions by police that weren’t traffic stops.I tried to imagine if I were a white man, would I have gotten pulled over for 4 over the limit? Not a chance. A white woman? Maybe, according to this guy, women take drugs to the Mexican boarder. But I imagine they’d be tacky looking women. Not one in pearls and tailed capris and ballet flats. I doubted all this hold up and searching would have happened with my once I explained I was in the military.What was most telling was all the white men who didn’t seem to understand. “Well, the police was just keeping our highways safe,” a white male military officer justified. Other white male military officers expressed that they couldn’t understand all that for four MPH over. But they would never consider race as a factor. They just couldn’t understand. A military officer, and self professed recovering pot head said, “Well I used to smoke a lot of pot and this never happened to me. So there must’ve been something else. they were probably looking for someone.” His confession was little more than bragging about the deeds he got away with.
I saw police pulled over on sides of roads the entire road trip. I tried to remember if I had ever seen a fair complexioned person standing outside their car. This incident gives me plenty to think about along the way to Wichita. I was getting bored and lonely during the drive but now, I had plenty of folks to talk to. This was certainly an experience. A pretty traumatizing one. To know that this man can do anything he wants to do to you on the side of the road and there’s noting you can do about it is incredibly paralyzing and a powerless position to be in.
A fellow military officer described an encounter while deployed and how he thought he was going to be killed. “You don’t know what its like. You’ve never had a deployment like mine,” He huffed. I do know what it’s like. Except I learned what it feels like after my deployment in your beloved Texas. In the country that I defend…not the country I invaded. He is financially compensated for the PTSD he got from the experience.
I’d hate for this to happen to anyone else. But I think it also revealed that this type of thing really does happen for those who deny that some people are targeted more than others. One former co-worker said it was an eye opener for her because she always judged people she saw getting searched on the side of the road until it happened to me — a low likelihood target. Welcome home.
