A tense standoff between an Arizona State University professor and a police officer, which ended in a physically aggressive arrest for jaywalking, is drawing national attention as an alleged incident of racial profiling. And there’s dashcam video.
The video, released by 3TV News, shows the professor, Ersula Ore, being stopped for jaywalking and asked for her identification. She maintains that others jaywalked as well (to avoid construction) and that there was no need to stop her. Supporters of Ore have posted photographs of the street on a Facebook page, showing that the street indeed is under construction, and one on which many people would cross the street in places other than a designated cross-walk.
The interaction with campus police escalates until she is body-slammed (after the police officer says he will do that). During the altercation, she specifically says that she is being treated unfairly, and also identifies herself as a professor. After she is forced onto the ground, she is seen kicking an officer (the alleged assault), but the professor’s lawyer says that she was exposed in a dress and that the officer was grabbing at her when this happened, and that this was legitimate self-defense.
There’s a MoveOn.org petition with just under 12,000 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon asking the school’s police department to “drop all charges and issue an unqualified apology.”
The school has consistently stood by the police, saying it has “found no evidence of inappropriate actions,” but after mounting criticism, it modified its stance:
However, the ASU Police Department is enlisting an outside law-enforcement agency to conduct an independent review on whether excessive force was used and if there was any racial motivation by the officers involved. In addition, although no university police protocols were violated, university police are conducting a review of whether the officer involved could have avoided the confrontation that ensued.
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