Police Release Video of Traffic Stop of Princeton Professor
Related Link Princeton professor cries ‘racism’ but she didn’t plan for dash cam that tells different story
The police in Princeton, N.J., released a dashboard video of the traffic stop of a black Princeton professor that led to her being handcuffed and searched by a white male officer — an encounter that she said left her humiliated and was emblematic of officers’ mistreatment of African-Americans.
The video shows what appears to be a routine traffic stop with the professor, Imani Perry, who sounds shaken but appears compliant after two white officers, one male and one female, pulled her over last week after, they said, she had been speeding. She was then arrested and handcuffed over unpaid parking tickets.
Dr. Perry, a professor of African-American studies at the university, described her experience in posts on Facebook and Twitter, setting off a social media debate and spurring what she said was some online abuse by commenters who said she had brought on the treatment herself. She said her posts also received words of support.
In the posts, Dr. Perry said the male officer had performed a “body search” even though a female officer was present, she was not allowed to contact colleagues to inform them of her arrest before being placed in the squad car, and she was later handcuffed to a table at the police station.
“The police treated me inappropriately and disproportionately,” she wrote in a Facebook post on Monday. “The fact of my blackness is not incidental to this matter.”
The Police Department chief, Capt. Nicholas K. Sutter, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that officers had followed policy in arresting the professor. ...