Even if you’re a pageant winner, you can’t run from being wrongfully convicted, harassed and scrutinized by the police.
Miss Black Texas 2016 Pageant winner Carmen Ponder claims she was harassed and wrongfully arrested by a police officer who called her a ‘Black b*tch.’
As a rightful millennial would respond, she informed her fans, friends and family via Twitter about her ordeal. Ponder called out Commerce Police Chief Kerry Crews, stating she wanted to press charges against him and have her wrongful charges to be dropped.
“She feels humiliated and embarrassed because she’s Miss Black Texas 2016,” Montana Bunn, a paralegal for attorney S. Lee Merritt, who’s representing Ponder, told the Daily News Thursday. “To be dragged through the mud for a legal issue and being arrested, it’s hindering her emotionally, her title and career path.”
According to NYDN, on Saturday, Ponder was on her way to a Walmart when she said she noticed a black truck driving erratically. The driver cut in front of her, she said.
She then drove around the truck before pulling up in the store’s parking lot. The truck pulled up beside her, and Crews began yelling profanities at her, she said in a Twitter post.
Crews told her he was teaching his 14-year-old daughter how to drive and that she shouldn’t have driven around them, Ponder said.
She told him “it’s illegal” to have a 14-year-old drive. As she walked to the store, Crews yelled, “Oh whatever, you black b—h!”
When she came out of the store, a plainclothes officer approached her and told her that Crews was his police chief and that she had better apologize to him.
Ponder refused to do so and started walking back to her car. The officer grabbed her by the arm and told her she was being detained.
The city of Commerce issued a statement disputing Ponder’s account and said Crews has been placed on administrative leave. A third party is investigating the incident, the city said.
Merritt is calling for the chief’s firing and his client’s charges to be dropped. It wasn’t clear whether she plans to sue the chief or the police department.
Miss Ponder was eventually charged with evading arrest.
After she gets her charges dropped, she should go ahead and sue the department. Good thing the law is starting to Crack down on these spineless crooks who abuse authority to get away with disrespect and insufficient evidence to avoid charges.
