Politicking While Black

[kwassa]

This is a local story from Montgomery County, MD, the first county north of Washington, DC. It is an affluent and diverse county of almost one million residents. It is a blue county in a blue state. The man in question in this report is Isiah Leggett, law professor and County Executive, the top job and the most powerful position in this county. He is also black.

and here is the story:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/montgomery-county-executive-recounts-his-own-police-profiling-incidents/2014/12/11/cc65aa28-80a8-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html?hpid=z4

On Nov. 3, as part of his election-eve ritual, Leggett, a Democrat who was running for a third term, placed campaign signs at about 20 polling locations. About 10:30 p.m., he said, he pulled up to the Good Hope Community Neighborhood Recreation Center, near his Burtonsville home in eastern Montgomery. He was alone — without his official security detail — and dressed casually in a sweater, jeans and baseball cap.

As he placed a sign beyond the 100-foot “no electioneering” perimeter, a Maryland-National Capital Park Police car pulled up. The community center is on county park land, patrolled by the police. Leggett said that a white officer emerged and began addressing him in what he called a loud and disrespectful tone.

“He jumps out and starts yelling at me. ‘What are you doing here? You can’t come here.’ He was screaming and yelling at the top of his voice about why I was there . . . in a very derogatory manner,” Leggett said.

Leggett said he did not identify himself but explained that there was an election the next day and that the officer would likely see others putting up signs. He said he also told the officer that there was no need to take such a tone.

Then another officer, a woman who is also white, got out of the car.

“She noticed the name [on the sign] and took a careful look at me,” Leggett said, and she apologized. “She said, ‘We didn’t know who you were,’ ” Leggett said. In an apparent attempt to excuse her partner, she said he lived in Howard County.

Leggett said he didn’t file a complaint about the incident.