Month: January 2017

– It Begins: Cop Stops Innocent Woman for Walking, Demands to See Her ‘Papers’:

In the wake of President Trump’s announcement to withhold federal funding from so-called sanctuary cities, places where federal immigration laws are not enforced, one story coming out of Bel Air, Maryland is getting national attention. Bel Air, MD is approximately 90 percent White, with a spattering of races and nationalities making up the remaining 10 percent. Resident Aravinda Pillalamarri, a naturalized U.S. citizen from India, says she found out the hard way how her neighbors feel about her presence in the neighborhood and how police treat people of color — in a modern day xenophobic police state.

“Ihre Papiere, Bitte!” That phrase often brought shudders to the people who heard it in the 1930s and ’40s. It is German for “Your papers, please,” and its sinister nostalgia is once again making a comeback.

Pillalamarri says she was simply enjoying a nice walk, just steps away from her home, when law enforcement officers arrived and began questioning her. When she explained that she lived nearby and was merely out for a walk, the officer on scene told her he’d received a call supposedly reporting a suspicious person. Pillalamarri replied to the officer with a question of her own, asking if it was a crime to be, “Walking while brown?”

When a supervisor arrived and began to question her more aggressively, she was informed that she “was under criminal investigation.” As The Free Thought Project has consistently reported, the officers then followed their modus operandi in asking Pillalamarri for her state-issued identification. Producing none, she was then questioned as to why she was not in possession of an ID card. That’s when officers asked her a question that admittedly disturbed her. They questioned, “Why don’t you have ID?” and, “Are you here illegally?”

Read moreIt Begins: Cop Stops Innocent Woman for Walking, Demands to See Her ‘Papers’