College Dean Accuses Officers of Stopping Her for Walking While Black’ -Police Video Differs

tea party crusaders ^ | October 31st, 2015 at 8:48 PM. | Juliette Washington

[UMCRevMom@aol.com]

Dorothy Bland, dean of the journalism school at the University of North Texas, is used to taking a walk at daybreak. But rain delayed her exercise regimen until later Saturday morning when she began traversing the streets of her well-to-do Corinth neighborhood.

POLICE VIDEO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh_OvluMqxI

But soon “flashing lights and sirens from a police vehicle” paused her walk, she wrote in a column for the Dallas Morning News.

Bland was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and she’s black.

“Like most African-Americans, I am familiar with the phrase ‘driving while black,’ but was I really being stopped for walking on the street in my own neighborhood?” she asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “In the words of Sal Ruibal, ‘Walking while black is a crime in many jurisdictions. May God have mercy on our nation.’”

Bland said she asked the officers if there was a problem but didn’t “remember getting a decent answer before one of the officers asked me where I lived and for identification.”

More from Bland:

I remember saying something like, “Around the corner. This is my neighborhood, and I’m a taxpayer who pays a lot of taxes.” As for the I.D. question, how many Americans typically carry I.D. with them on their morning walk? Do you realize I bought the hoodie I was wearing after completing the Harvard University Institute for Management and Leadership in Education in 2014? Do you realize I have hosted gatherings for family, friends, faculty, staff and students in my home? Not once was a police officer called. To those officers, my education or property-owner status didn’t matter. One officer captured my address and date of birth.

Bland figured she “was simply a brown face in an affluent neighborhood. I told the police I didn’t like to walk in the rain, and one of them told me, ‘My dog doesn’t like to walk in the rain.’ Ouch!”

She added that “for safety’s sake” she used her iPhone to take a photo of the officers and their patrol car’s license plate, as Bland didn’t want to end up like “the dozens of others who have died while in police custody.” Within hours after posting about the incident on Facebook, Bland said more than 100 friends spread the news across the country.

“You are now in the company of Henry Louis Gates and others with the same experience,” she said one of her former students wrote her. “We must stop racial profiling.”

Bland added that she stopped by the mayor’s house and asked him, “Do I look like a criminal?” She continued, “Mayor Bill Heidemann said no and shook his head in disbelief. I appreciate the mayor being a good neighbor, but why should he need to verify that I am not a menace to society?”

But after Corinth Police Chief Debra Walthall caught wind of the incident, she wrote a response, which was in the second part of the Dallas Morning News piece, and said that the encounter was about Bland’s safety, not race — and that dashcam video from the officer’s patrol car proves it.

[sonjay]

I live in the suburbs and always see people walking on quiet roads in the same manner as this woman and I've never heard of or seen a police officer stop and ask anyone for ID.

It's entirely possible that people are stopped, but they don't go to the news and try to make a federal case out of it. They say "Thank you, officer, for your concern about my safety" and go on their way.

[Antoninus II]

It’s not an offense that calls for producing ID to the police.

As stated before, it's a class C misdemeanor. Therefore it does require producing an ID. By law she could have been hauled downtown. Guess you didn't read the whole thread there Captain Krunch...

[Vermont Lt]

Because the sidewalks are uneven and I’ve tripped on them.

No law against walking in the road.

The cops sopped her because some silly scared white idiot called in.

[Ben Ficklin]

"Just another black attempting to get her 15 minutes of fame"

It would be more accurate to say that she was an uppity black woman who, because she is educated and has a good paying job(probably because of quotas), was attempting to live in an upper middle class neighborhood in North Dallas(Corinth).

She thought that she was entitled to more than a Negro Mammy living in the hoods of South Dallas.

Don't forget: the two most dangerous things in the world are a black person with an education and a Mexican with a driver's license.

[OpusatFR]

I walk in a semi-rural area and have been stopped because I use a walking stick for balance.

I have also been asked for my ID.

It is not unusual and I am white. I just don’t make an issue of being combative and spoiling for a fight.

[norwaypinesavage]

" I walk everyday in my neighborhood and never once was stopped by police."

I walk every day, too. I always walk on the side to face oncoming traffic, and on the sidewalk whenever there is one. I never flop my arms like a wounded goose.

The cops couldn't see what her race was before they stopped her. They were polite and friendly. She was nothing but a race pimp.

[tophat9000]

Look.. walking in the middle of the road waving your hands when you got a perfectly good sidewalk right next to you for pedestrian traffic .. you do look like the crazy homeless person... at the very least, a cop is probably going to stop you to make sure you’re OK

[tophat9000]

cops always ask for ID

[tophat9000]

that’s just stupid.... Sidewalk are for pedestrian traffic... roads are for vehicle traffic.... you do not the mix the two if they’re available for simple safety reasons...

I’m sorry if I’m driving and there’s some idiot walking in the middle of road I’m going to get pissed off..

or do you think that a pedestrian should have the right away and walk in the middle of the road we’re not talking crossing the road we’re talking walking in the middle of road blocking traffic

and it was not white person being scared of a black person... it was a guy in a pickup truck legally trying to drive down the road ...that was she was blocking... and couldn’t even see her color from behind

that’s the problem with this there’s an assumption of bigotry from the get go by her and by you when really she being treated like any other person for acting like an idiot and being a pain in the ass for everyone else around her

[Vermont Lt]

Ok. Whatever.

Texans are always right. It’s Paradise there.

[PAR35]

This is what is needed:

http://www.amazon.com/Dixie-Air-Horn-Dixieland-Premium/dp/B007MFZEXO

Or J.C. Whitney used to have some that played a dozen or so tunes.

[RebelTXRose]

misdemeanor not enough to ask for ID?

[bgill]

There was every reason to stop her. They told her they stopped her for walking out in the street and on the wrong side to see oncoming traffic. A truck had to stop because she was impeding traffic. She’s so worried about her tax dollars, then use the safe sidewalks she paid for instead of acting like a crazy person flapping their arms down the middle of the street clueless to what’s going on around her. If she had been hit by a truck, she’d have sued the driver despite it being her fault.

[Ready4Freddy]

See “Brown, Michael, Ferguson MO. Dead, 1 each”

[Ready4Freddy]

Resurrected in Florida, 2012 in the form of ‘Coming-home-from-buying-the-ingredients-for-purple-drank-and-decided-to-rough-up-the-wrong-neighborhood-watch-guy-while-black’

[maxwellsmart_agent]

The policemen asked her for ID when she started to establish the case that she was being stopped because she was black. They did this for the record in case she started to put forth the claim I suspect. Before that, they simply suggested she walk on the side of the road facing traffic.

[bjorn14]

I have. When I was walking home from school at night. No way the cop knew I was a kid at 6’2” 200lbs. Usually they gave me a ride the rest of the way as we lived out in the country.

[bjorn14]

MBAs are considered terminal degrees. There are very few DBAs awarded.

[HonkyTonkMan]

PhD no?

[CodeToad]

“Walking while black”?

I guess that means walking down the idle of the street like an idiot and then claiming racism when stopped by the police.

Dean of a university. Shows how dumbed down universities have become when they hire idiots like her.