Mignon Lott,
Wayne State,
Detroit, MI.
My boyfriend and I were out on M59 heading to an event that he was catering when I was flicked. I pulled over. The officer walked up to the car and asked did I know why he pulled me over. I said no. He said because I didn’t have my lights on, but it was dusk, the sun was just barely going down, I didn’t say that to him. He asked do they work and I turned them on for him. He asked for my license and I informed him that I had lost it earlier that day but I recited my license number and gave him my work badge, insurance and registration (which also lists my drivers license number). He went to his car, ran my info ( or so he said, but he wasn’t really gone long) and came back to the car and instructed me to get out of the car. He handcuffed me and said my license wasn’t valid. I told him that the cuffs were too tight and they hurts and he yanked my arms up to tighten the cuffs. He handled me roughly the whole way to the squad car and shoved me in. As I sat up I noticed him and his partner searching my car. They actually found my license for me. They drove me to the station and once there a woman began to process me in. She asked me what happened and I told her why they stated they pulled me over. She said the sun hasn’t set yet. I looked at her as if to say, “I know.” She looked me in the eye and said, “ok, we’ll get you on your way.” She finished what she was doing with my information, got up and walked over to the desk commander, after 10 minutes and $150, I was walking out calling my sisters to pick me up to go get my car. They had taken my boyfriend to his catering event and gave him the keys to my car and allowed him to park the car in a parking lot.
I believe they pulled me over because they saw me with my afro puff and immediately profiled me. My boyfriend (who later became my husband of 10 years) was very fair. I later found out that they told him not to “mess with my kind.” It was a very menacing ordeal and kept me away from that area for a very long time. I didn’t even want to go out towards that area. I’m glad that I didn’t loose my temper or resist from the pain that the handcuffs were causing to my wrists because it could have ended the same way that Sandra Bland’s case ended. I just continued to cooperate and not be combative. But I feel like I would’ve have been well within my rights to fight it because they had no reason to treat me the way they did. It was embarrassing and I really felt like it was my fault because I was the one that had lost my ID, so I never told anyone, until recently.
