Lawyer confronts cops over handyman stop; was deference because of race and class? (See the video)
A lawyer scolded police officers for stopping an elderly handyman and led him away in a scene recorded on videotape and posted online.
The lawyer, Jody Westby, is white, and the handyman is black, as are the officers. The Washington Post has the video (see below), recorded by Westby’s housekeeper. According to the Post, Westby defended the handyman, who had done work for her, “with an air of authority only reserved for people who perceive themselves as having as much power as the police.”
Westby, who is CEO of Global Cyber Risk, was working from her home in an affluent neighborhood when police stopped the handyman. Westby wants to know what happened, and police tell her they were called to investigate a burglar alarm. The handyman had been stopped because he was carrying bags.
Westby demands to know where the alarm call came from, and determines that it was from another neighborhood. When an officer protests that the handyman was loud and boisterous, Westby says it’s because he was being accused.
The “showstopper,” according to the Post, is when Westby scolds the officers for harassing the handyman and tells the officers to leave. “She’s pointing her fingers and gesturing toward the [squad] car window,” the Post says. “That’s the type of behavior that coming from many other people would be considered dangerous, threatening or violent in some way.” Then Westby takes the handyman by the hand and leads him away.
An officer orders Westby to stop, and she replies: “I’m an attorney and this is wrong. Now please leave our neighborhood.” After the officer offers a business card, Westby says: “Just because he’s black, doesn’t mean he’s here to rob a house. He works for us. He’s been in this neighborhood for 30 years.”
The story surmises that Westby wouldn’t have been shown the same deference in a poor neighborhood.
“The level of comfort with which she communicates with the officers due to her knowledge of the law and lack of fear of retribution offers a lesson about how the intersection of race, class and privilege can impact the interactions between police officers and some residents,” the story says.
However, Westby says in a Forbes column that the messages she has been receiving since the Post article “indicate that it is not a black/white issue” but rather a police department issue.
“And it is not one that is going to be miraculously cured by officers wearing their own video cameras,” Westby wrote. “The beating of Rodney King was videotaped 22 years ago. Sadly, not much has changed.”
Hat tip to Raw Story, which noted the Post account.
Updated Oct. 16 to include a link to Westby’s Forbes column and comments from it.
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