Arrested by Dr. June Scorza Terpstra

[donsu]

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1978.shtml


On Thursday evening, March 8, International Women’s Day, I was arrested by Evanston police. This occurrence came on the heels of a controversial article I wrote for which I received hate mail and death threats.

I was made to step out of my car; my hands were cuffed behind my back as I stood in the dark street with three young, piggish male officers. I was asked if I had 100 dollars cash. Cars with people stopped at the nearest cross light were staring at me. My person, my car and my purse were searched. I was asked if I had anything up my crotch. I was placed in the suffocating back seat of a squad car and taken to the Evanston police station.

As I was commandeered into a holding area, my hands cuffed behind my back, I remembered this police station. Twenty years ago I was the founder of a women’s shelter and a women’s university program in Evanston and had occasion to work with police in that building who knew little to nothing and cared less about victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

I was questioned as to whether I take drugs. I consciously kept my dignity and said, no, do you? I was told I thought I was “above the law” by a boy given deadly toys to protect his master’s money and rules playing king of the traffic violations hill. For further intimidation I was threatened with a strip search and a jail cell. My husband bailed me out.

What was my crime? I had failed to pay a speeding ticket in Kansas about a year ago and unknown to me my license was suspended. There I was, a woman who had founded programs for women and children in Evanston and has been teaching social justice at universities and colleges for over 20 years in the USA, with three uniformed robo-boys bereft of minds and hearts as they rummaged through my car stocked with baby seats for grandkids and kid’s toys for my weekend birthday party with my grandchildren. They put me in the back of the police car, my wrists burning from the handcuffs, with my blood pressure soaring, unable to breathe for the first minutes, struck down powerless against boys with guns and handcuffs who said that they were only “following procedure.” I was instantly criminalized because I had lost a ticket a year ago and had never received notice in my move from one state to another.
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[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Police state

We are living in a police state. This is one of the worst parts of the Patriot Act.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. You can bet your bottom dollar

that conservative activists who have forgotten tickets have had them "forgiven".

[Snotcicles]

3. This would make a good article for the local paper. nt

[DeepBlueC]

4. it's sensible to pay tickets

that's all there is to it. This sounds like standard arrest procedure, ugly perhaps, but I guess the message is: don't get arrested. I have a lot more sympathy for innocent people caught up in the dragnet around a GOP convention.

[soothsayer]

5. I got a ride in a paddy wagon (with apologies to the Irish) for failure

to pay a ticket. Actually, I HAD paid the ticket but failed to notify the DMV, so was still showing a suspended license. That particular neighborhood cop was constantly complained about because he seemed to go out of his way to humiliate average citizens (I was a nice 19 y.o. gal at the time), but he was a big money earner for the county. later on he threatened to drive his squad car thru the courthouse or something equally nutty and they finally let him go. I got the handcuff treatment too (even in the wagon, which meant I slid all over the place; another cop told me he wasn't supposed to have left them on like that. Creep.

I feel for ya! It's a weird, powerless, invasive feeling to be arrested.