Getting Stopped by Police as a Black Woman
Words and Image by Erin Mina Barber
This first thing that happens is my little body kinks start to come out. In my case, my face just starts twitching uncontrollably. Like, it really starts to go berserk.
My tongue starts poking itself out of my mouth cave. Then it starts tracing my lips, leaving a trail of saliva on the inner rims.
My eyelids get really heavy, forcing my blinks to go into hyper-mode. Suddenly, my pupils are super dry and my tear ducts are forced to compensate.
Not to mention I’m asthmatic. Like, 60%-of-a-normal-lung-capacity-has-small-asthma-attacks-when-she-laughs-too-hard, asthmatic. So you can only imagine how my breathing is. Shallow, quick, and gasp-y.
And on top of all that, my heart is beating out of my chest.
All this to say, we’re not starting off from a great place. There is no calm, cool, and collected in my car although I’m trying to talk myself into it.
Okay Erin, just breathe. You’re going to be okay. Keep your hands on the wheel. Move slowly. Announce your actions. Smile. Be super polite. Eye contact but not in a staring contest kind of way. Just breathe.
The officer approaches my car. A 2000 Nissan Altima. I roll down the window.
“Do you know why I pulled you over today?”
_________
Let’s back up.
The year is 2011, the year of Arcade Fire headlining Outside Lands. Myself, my then boyfriend, and two friends bought our early bird tickets and come 7:00 a.m. the morning of August 8 we’re starting the trek up to San Francisco from Santa Barbara. We’re all college students and we’re excited—how could you not be? A weekend of awesome live music in a beautiful city with people you love? Sign me up.
But everything goes a little sideways when we get pulled over on the 101.
Driving along in the left lane going exactly 70 mph I look in my rear-view mirror to see a car coming speeding behind me. It rides my tail for some solid minutes. It is so close I’m actually nervous that if I were to brake or slow down it would rear-end me.
And then I notice it’s a police car.
And the twitching starts.
Okay Erin, you have two options. Clearly this officer has somewhere to be, or else why would he be riding on your tail like this? So you can speed up, as he’s clearly pushing you to go faster, or you can get over so he can pass. Speeding up is a bad idea. You’re already going the speed limit. So rather put on your right blinker and get over.
I do exactly this thinking that the too-fast officer will pass and race on.
Immediately, there are lights and a siren starts blaring. The officer mirrors my lane merge and follows me just as closely as before.
I pull over safely to the shoulder and not a beat later, he’s right there at my passenger window.
“Do you know why I pulled you over today?”
“No.”
“I’m wondering why you merged lanes like that. You have your license and registration?”
“I—what?” stammering, sweating, I can’t hear over the wind and trucks zooming by.
“I need your registration.”
In my twitchy, anxiousness I lunge to the glove compartment to pull out my registration card and pass it to the officer through the window.
He walks back to his squad car and, I assume, runs my vehicle registration number through the database.
It takes what feels like hours.
He comes back and asks me a string of questions: “Who does the vehicle belong to? Do you have any paraphernalia or narcotics in the car? Where are you coming from? Where are you going? Which routes are you taking?”
I answer: “My stepdad. No. Santa Barbara. San Francisco. The 101.”
A ringing in my ears. Trying to control my uncontrollable blinking.
He lets me go but commands me to stay in the right lane.
After he’s gone, I sit paralyzed and start to tear up. My friends console me, say I did a good job. There’s nothing to worry about.
But I know that there is plenty to worry about. I know that the outcome of this pointless stop could have ended a lot worse. As it did when I was 15 years old. As it did when the officer that pulled us, a car full of 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds, over and drew her gun.
On that night, I was in the car with my friend, her brother, her brother’s boyfriend and another friend of his. They were seniors in high school while we were sophomores. We loved hanging out with the cool, gay older brother who took us to the movies, the mall, pride parades.
We were coming back from the local gelato café. It was the year of Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” so of course we had it turned up to a blasting decibel as we drove and sang along loudly and out of tune.
But louder still were the sound of sirens. Sirens that pulled up behind us in the darkness of the night.
As we slowed to a halt, I began to panic. I wasn’t wearing a seat belt. I was smooshed in the middle seat of my friend’s brother’s Camry between two 17-year-old boys. I had forgone my seatbelt when I got in the car at the gelato shop. I couldn’t find that tricky middle seat clasp, so my teenage brain reasoned to just go without.
And here we were, getting pulled over. Me without a seat belt now fumbling, trying, and failing clumsily to secure it.
The officer walked to the driver door and shined her flashlight.
Slowly, my friend’s brother rolled down the window.
“We got a call that there was a car matching this description full of teenagers going around egging houses.”
She notices me fumbling in the back just as my seatbelt finally clicks in place, draws her gun and points it in my direction.
”HANDS UP! UP WHERE I CAN SEE THEM! SHOW ME YOUR HANDS SHOW ME YOUR HANDS!”
We all raise our hands to the interior roof of the Camry frozen in shock.
She lowers the gun and places it back in its holster then depresses the radio on her shoulder and speaks something into it. She backs away from our car and returns to her vehicle.
My friend’s brother’s hands are trembling on the steering wheel. All of us are wide-eyed statues.
The officer returns, this time asking for a license and registration, before giving us a stern and harsh talking to.
The rest was a blur.
But I can still remember vividly the sweat that rolled down my cheeks, the deafening sound of my own heartbeat.
I often wonder how this encounter would have gone if it had been a car full of Black teenagers instead of four, White suburban teens and me, a Black outlier. Would we all have been made to get out of the car and splay ourselves on the cutting asphalt? Or would we have just been shot point blank?
Ever since that night, driving back from the gelato café, every time I’m stopped by a police officer in the US, my body starts convulsing. The kinks come—the twitching and the tongue, the blinking and the asthma.
Because I’m afraid that I’m 15 again. Seatbelt undone. Listening to “Poker Face.”
And I am afraid that this will be the time when I won’t get to return home and curl up in my warm bed.
I won’t be at the breakfast table the next morning.
I won’t make it to 8:00 a.m. AP Chemistry.
I will have met my maker because I was 15 and I wasn’t wearing a seat belt.
About the Author:
Erin is a life-liver, writer, innovator, and dreamer with an immense love for people, storytelling, music, and dogs. She lives in Germany and has a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in Film, Media, English and Communication and an MBA in Media Management from Cardiff University in Wales.
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