TyArrest

 

Activist and former North Carolina State Senate candidate Ty Turner was arrested during a Moral Mondays rally in Charlotte, NC.

Turner was arrested and later released for distributing voting rights leaflets. Those who had assembled for Moral Mondays proceeded to go to jail to demand Turner’s release. As the crowd waited, Turner eventually arrived at the jail and was released. He was given a citation.


From ThinkProgress:

“They said they would charge me for distributing literature,” Turner told ThinkProgress when he was released a few hours later. “I asked [the policeman] for the ordinance number [being violated], because they can’t put handcuffs on you if they cannot tell you why they’re detaining you. I said, ‘Show me where it’s illegal to do this.’ But he would not do it. The officer got mad and grabbed me. Then he told me that I was resisting arrest!”

There is a local ordinance prohibiting leafleting on cars. But according to local activist Casey Throneburg, who also filmed the arrest, it is almost never enforced, and “certainly not with handcuffs.”

Instead of transporting Turner to the Mecklenburg County jail, which sits just a few blocks from Marshall Park, he said they first took him to an empty lot behind the highway.

“They took me to three different spots other than the jail,” he told ThinkProgress. “They knew they were in the wrong.”

Watch the encounter here:

Why, despite increased scrutiny from the public, do police officers continue to engage with black people violently? 

Thoughts on this story?

 Sound off below!