In another example of police incompetence, Delaware cops pulled over a car and ordered all the Black occupants out at gunpoint Saturday night, including two women and four children, accusing them of driving in a stolen car.
But the Dover police officers never bothered to check the registration, which would have confirmed the woman driving the car was the actual owner.
Instead, they transported the two women to the precinct along with the four children, locking each woman in a separate cell along with the 14-year-old boy, who was also locked in a separate cell. The three younger children, 8-year-old twin girls and a 3-year-old girl, were placed inside a children’s room.
Then, five minutes later, the cops realized their mistake and released the five individuals, with one cop telling the women the false arrest was not based on racial profiling but officer safety.
But Hope York, the 33-year-old mother of the four children who posted videos of the unlawful detainment to TikTok, where they have gone viral, is not buying that excuse.
“The officer said, ‘I want you to know this had nothing to do with race. It’s just that we are dying in the streets and I have a family to go to,” York explained in an exclusive interview with Atlanta Black Star on Tuesday.
But York has no doubt it was based on race, because earlier in the evening at the traffic stop, another cop tried to justify the unlawful detainment of her family by using the same argument after she questioned why they felt the need to handcuff her son.
“I was telling them my son is 14 and an honors student and just graduated, and they said, ‘Who gives a f-ck about him,’” she said.
“And one cop said to me, ‘Have you not watched the news lately? White officers are dying. These Black kids, 10 and 11, are carrying guns and they’re killing us.”
For the record, 40 cops have died in the line of duty in 2025, including 20 who were shot and killed, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page.
Meanwhile, 540 citizens have been killed by cops this year, with Black people getting killed at a rate of 2.8 times compared to white people, according to Mapping Police Violence.
“I told him my kids are traumatized and we didn’t deserve that,” York said.
The cop responded by threatening to issue her a ticket for a seatbelt violation if she did not leave the precinct immediately, she said.
The Arrest
York and her friend and the four children had just driven to a Chinese restaurant to pick up dinner when they were pulled over by a multitude of police cars. The cops ordered her friend to step out of the vehicle and walk backward toward them.
“There were like 15 cop cars, and they had the vehicle surrounded,” York said. “I noticed the street was blocked off. I told my son, who was in the back seat, to start recording.”
The cops then ordered York out of the car, ordering her to walk backward to them, where they placed handcuffs on her. Then they did the same to her son.
And then she said the cops pulled guns on the three remaining children in the car, ordering them to step outside. Video recorded from inside the car shows the kids were crying, not realizing what was happening.
“I still have no idea what is going on because they never told us anything,” she said. “I did not understand why they had the guns or and were handcuffing us.”
She said the cops refused to inform her why they were being detained, but threatened to have child protective services take her children at the precinct.
The cops eventually told them the car had been reported stolen, which came as a shock to the two women.
“I said there is no way this car is stolen because I remember the day she bought it,” York said. “I got pictures of her on my phone buying it.”
After about an hour in handcuffs, they learned that the traffic stop was a result of her friend’s mother calling the police a few weeks earlier on her 15-year-old son, who took her keys after an argument in New York City.
The mother reported the set of keys stolen, but one of the keys was for her daughter’s car, which somehow got translated to a report of a stolen car.
York is now hoping to find an attorney to sue the Dover Police Department for their incompetence, racism, and unlawful detainment.
Great Job Carlos Miller & the Team @ Atlanta Black Star Source link for sharing this story.
