The Talk

It wasn’t that long ago, I had a young Black man in my car who had received only a mild form of “The Talk,” that is, the conversation Black parents very unfortunately need to have with their children about what to do when confronted by police.

I explained to him that cops will lie, that they will just make shit up. Don’t believe me?

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Public Defendering

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23 Aug, 14 tweets, 3 min read

Thread about my retaliatory arrest:

6 police units arrived at my mom’s house at 5:30am, 3 different police agencies showed up, all exits from my mom’s house were barricaded, had officers surrounding the house, 1/6

my mom saw through the ring speaker that two officers were sniffing through their license plates under the carport. Mom “may I help you?”thru the ring. They said they had a warrant for me but refused to say what for. Mom told them that I was a public defender and at court. 2/6

I immediately leave my house so not to put my husband or my dog at risk should they get the right address. Driving on the road, I’m anxious that I’ll be targeted and stopped to execute the warrant.

Make it to my office, immediately start hiding out in my colleagues office who has no fucks to give should shit go sideways — there we plan to stay in the office to avoid arrest while figuring out exactly what is going on. My colleague begins by calling the PD with the warrant—

The officer who answered the phone knew me and that they were out trying to execute a warrant for me. When asked what the warrant was for they said they didn’t have to say. When asked for a copy— they said they did not have authorization to provide us with one.

The conversation switched drastically after those two questions to — “where is she? At her office. Bring her to us so we can execute the warrant and arrest her. My colleague told the police officer that would not happen without more information on the warrant.

About 5 minutes later the phone rings, my colleague answers and hands the phone to me. The guy who was trying to execute the warrant was on the phone telling me that this will get ugly if I continue to avoid arrest. Again, I am at my officer and in court at 2pm.

At this point their refusal to come to the courthouse to arrest me or arrest me at my office—was making me think something really sketchy was going on.

I was working on a attempted murder of a police officer case representing the defendant. It seemed far fetched but I was starting to think it was retaliation for that.

I called a few ADAs I knew would do favors for me and asked them to look into it. They later reported that the police wouldn’t give them any information about what the warrant was for— nothing. The ADAs checked the warrant system and a warrant for me didn’t exist.

“When the ADAs called me back they said the same thing “Don’t know what’s going on but this is retaliation about that case. They won’t tell us anything about the warrant but it doesn’t exist. You need to stay somewhere other than your house tonight.

Don’t let them arrest you. I don’t know exactly what is going on but I do know they intend to not release you and fuck with you. The cop mentioned 30 days but They are going to try to hold you for as long as they can.

I plan on finishing them but imma wait to see how much interest I get before I bother typing it all out for nothing

I’m going to finish, I swear. I’m just falling asleep and to do the remainder of the story justice I need to finish it in the morning, so stay tuned.[1]

The cops are trying this on someone they know to be a lawyer, someone they know will know her rights, someone they know has the means to check their claims. Consider what they will do to someone, anyone, who doesn’t have the privilege and the access that this public defender has.


  1. [1]Public Defendering [pseud.], [Twitter thread], August 23, 2020, https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1297405642848837633.html

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