A teenager was mishandled by the police who grabbed the girl by her hair and dragged her out of the car. The 17-year-old girl was arrested in Michigan because she was driving with only a permit and without an adult present in the car. She was yanked out of her mother’s SUV at a traffic stop with excessive force as seen on the footage from the body cams worn by the police. A cop even pulled a gun on the two other minors, aged 14 and 15, who were with her in the car.
“I wasn’t understanding why they were asking me to get out of the car,” Clary said. “So I was trying to ask them, why, what’s wrong? But they just grabbed me out of the car.” Michael Fortner, the family’s attorney said, “They snatched her out by her hair. This girl weighs 105 pounds, if that, soaking wet. You’ve got 250-pound officers beating up on a 17-year-old weighing 105 pounds.” Clary’s mother, Maria Woods, expressed her disappointment in how things were handled as well. “I was very hurt that that happened to my child and I was scared for her,” she said.
Nevaeh Anderson, one of the cousins in the car was scared for her life when the police pulled them over and even burst into tears. “I thought he was going to shoot us because we tried to get out the car,” Anderson stated. The fear the youngster felt is not unfounded since the police are known to use disproportionate force against Black people in similar cases. Just recently, a Black man was shot by police as he was getting back into his car after he was stopped by them. Daunte Wright was shot while he was in the driver’s seat and crashed a few blocks away. He was later pronounced dead. This has sparked protests demanding justice for Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.
As for Clary, she was arrested and charged with reckless driving, resisting arrest, and disobeying a stop sign. She is an honor roll student at River Rouge and will attend Alabama State University on a scholarship in the fall. Despite the undue physical force was used on a teenager, the officers involved have not been formally disciplined because the girl’s family has not yet filed a complaint. “Why you need the family to complain when you see officers mistreating kids like this,” Fortner said. “These are babies.” The River Rouge Police Department, however, has said that they will review the incident and they will also “take the matter seriously.”
Darnell Blackburn, a law enforcement trainer said, “We’re looking at this as objectively as we can, I think the point of it is, that just because something is justified, doesn’t make it just. Did he have every reason to do everything he did? Absolutely, he had a reason as an officer, but it doesn’t necessarily make it just. it could’ve been handled differently and it could’ve been done a different way.” Fortner said a lawsuit against the River Rouge Police Department is in the works.