SEAHO Report - Fall 2020 - 19

FEATURE ARTICLES

A Letter to a Police Officer
from a White Woman
Natasha Young, University of North Carolina Greensboro

Originally written April 2017, edited June 2020
Dear Sergeant Dragon of the Connecticut State Police,
On June 15, 2016, you pulled me over for speeding
on Interstate 395 North in Connecticut, about half
an hour from the Massachusetts state line. Rightfully
so, I was going 79 mph in a 65 mph zone; had I been
going 80 mph you easily could have ticketed me for
criminal speeding or reckless driving, according to
Connecticut state law. You came around to my passenger side window, and the only question you proceeded
to ask me was, "Do you know why I pulled you over
today?" I answered honestly that I believed I had been
speeding, handed you my license and registration, you
walked back to your cruiser, and proceeded to write
me my first ever traffic violation and speeding ticket of
$260.00.
The surprising part of this interaction for me was that
you never questioned why I was speeding through the
state of Connecticut with my New Hampshire state
license plates and a GPS at 7:30pm on a Wednesday,
what I was doing, or where I was going. You never
even asked why the title and registration for my car
was in the name of my father, and not myself. The
interaction was brief, lasting all of maybe 10 minutes,
most of which you spent looking up my record in your
computer database. But in that period of time, I quickly learned how my white privilege had benefited me in
that moment. Not for a second did I question that you
pulled me over because of my race or ethnicity, especially since on the speeding ticket you checked the box
that said, "Not Hispanic," while my race or ethnicity
is not even listed on my driver's license. To you, and
to most other people, I appear as an innocent, young,
white woman who is harmless.
The other surprising part of this interaction was that

at least 303 Black people were murdered by the police
in 2016, most of them being unarmed, and quite a few
occurring in simple traffic stops such as the one we
met at (mappingpoliceviolence.org). Particularly, in
February of 2016, another Connecticut State Trooper
killed an unarmed Black man, Thomas Lane, with a
Taser following a car collision just months prior on
Interstate 95 through West Haven, CT (Juliano and
Grecan, 2016). In the moments after my traffic stop,
I could not help but think to myself, "How different
would that interaction have been had I been of another race, particularly if I had been a Black person?"
With the summer of 2016 seeing such high rates of
police violence disproportionality targeted towards
Black people, I began to reflect on the ways in which
society has trained the police to interact with white
people, like myself, and how differently police have
been trained when interacting with Black people and
Non-Black People of Color, such as how Thomas Lane
was treated by the Connecticut State Police following a
car accident.
Where I began to reflect on how my whiteness had
affected your perception of me throughout the entirety
of that traffic stop, I started to consider how I felt that
entire time. I was nervous, my stomach did that weird
clenching thing, and I felt slightly nauseous with the
consistent thought of, "So much for my perfect driving
record and insurance rates." I had also been drinking
earlier that afternoon, and so while I was completely
sober, I could not help but be paranoid that you would
speculate I was driving drunk. However, I realized that
I did not fear for my life in that moment. My mind was
filled with petty, superficial thoughts, and that was one
of many ways in which white privilege has manifested
itself in my life and ultimately shaped the way I perceive the world. I did not fear for my life in your presence at that moment, I did not fear for further conflict
or for being framed as a belligerent criminal, as many

19
http://www.mappingpoliceviolence.org
SEAHO Report - Fall 2020

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