Fay Wells, who is the vice president of strategy at a multinational corporation, penned a piece in The Washington Post today, detailing the harrowing ordeal that took place on Sept. 6 and how she is still shaken up. She writes, “I’m heartbroken that the place I called home no longer feels safe.”Wells had just gotten back from her weekly soccer game and found that she had locked herself out of her home, and hired a locksmith to open the door for her. But after she got inside her apartment, that’s when things escalated. A large dog was barking in her stairwell, and officers pointed guns at her. They entered her apartment, and an officer pulled Wells’ hands behind her back and took her outside. That’s when she saw an “ocean of officers.” Though Wells says that the officers at the time wouldn’t explain to her why they were there, she later found out that a total of 19 were dispatched and that her white neighbor had reported a burglary at her apartment.Wells writes:It didn’t matter that I told the cops I’d lived there for seven months, told them about the locksmith, offered to show a receipt for his services and my ID. It didn’t matter that I went to Duke, that I have an MBA from Dartmouth, that I’m a vice president of strategy at a multinational corporation. It didn’t matter that I’ve never had so much as a speeding ticket. It didn’t matter that I calmly, continually asked them what was happening. It also didn’t matter that I didn’t match the description of the person they were looking for — my neighbor described me as Hispanic when he called 911. What mattered was that I was a woman of color trying to get into her apartment — in an almost entirely white apartment complex in a mostly white city — and a white man who lived in another building called the cops because he’d never seen me before.It’s still been an uphill battle for Wells, who says she’s had to jump through hoops to get from the Santa Monica Police Department the names of the officers who showed up that night. Even then, the facts don’t match up. She only received 17 of the 19 names from authorities, and the Washington Post got 17 names that didn’t all match up with the list Wells received. She’s since filed an official complaint with internal affairs. The department told the Washington Post that it was within protocol based on this type of call to warrant “a very substantial police response.”
Source: 19 Officers Swarm Black Woman As She Tries To Get Into Her Own Apartment: LAist










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