Name of Person Reporting Incident:
Tyiesha Radford Shorts
Location of Incident:
Columbus, OH
Time/ Date of Incident:
February 2015
Circumstances of Incident:
- Discrimination based on: race, class
- Event by type: harassment in a public place
Description of the Incident:
After leaving a classroom discussion in my graduate program wherein Kathleen Cleaver was present, I was heading home to my historically Black neighborhood in my white, 2001 Toyota Avalon. The road where I was stopped is a two-lane road. As the police sirens flashed behind me, I met with the same paralysis that many experience when the wave of blue and red floods their rear-view mirrors at night. Perhaps it was because I had just listened to Ms. Cleaver discuss the ways in which COINTELPRO would harass members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Perhaps it was because I recalled how the police trained a gun on my father’s head in our garage over a domestic dispute when I was 10-years-old. Whatever it was that made me pull over in front of the streetlight probably saved my life that night. I pulled my car to a stop and watched one then two police officers exit their patrol car then pace forward on either side of my vehicle. The office on the driver side was armed with a flashlight. The officer on the passenger side, stayed back a few paces — holster unsnapped, hand hovering over his gun. The officer on the driver side rapped on my window before asking me for my license and registration. I had them prepared and slid both through the small opening. He studied my license long enough to read the first two letters of my name before asking me who my vehicle was registered to. I chuckled. Even in this moment of terror, I still found the question laughable. My vehicle was registered to me. My name was on my license. The face on my license matched mine all the way to my puff pulled atop my head. I responded by saying that the vehicle was mine. I didn’t play with semantics, dancing around who the vehicle was registered to. The car was mine. The rights are mine. The space was mine. Despite the fact that these two armed white men were prepared to deny it all. The officer on the driver side handed back my property, advised me to come to a complete stop behind the line at an intersection. Even suggested that I have a nice evening. I sat in my car while they both retreated, waited for the lights to wane and for the vehicle to pull off. Then I cried.
What have you thought about since the incident took place?
Since being pulled over by the police, I constantly think about those with the privilege of talking to law enforcement sideways. Most of our interactions with the police are followed by the feeling of terrible inconvenience — and rightfully so. Yet there are a privileged few who can express their annoyance fully and live to see another day.
How were you affected by what happened?
The incident has made me hyper-vigilant when driving, or even when others are driving. I am constantly aware of the tiniest moving violations that could result in armed correction.
Who else was affected by what happened and how?
This is my first time sharing the incident, so no one really knows enough for the incident to have impacted them; however, my hyper-vigilance carries over and becomes over-protection of my loved ones.
What do you think needs to happen to make things as right as possible?
To put it simply, abolition.
What do you need for your healing?
In order to heal, I need moments like this to really sit with my trauma. To feel, and then to release
