Steve Burns
WMAL.com
ANNAPOLIS – (WMAL) At an event hailing new police profiling guidelines for Maryland, Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett relayed a story, he said, exemplifying the need for the new recommendations advising against police profiling citizens by race.
In what he said was a tradition for him, the night before Election Day last November, he was at the Good Hope Recreation Center in Silver Spring putting out his own campaign signs. “As I pulled up, I looked behind me and there was a flashing light of a car,” Leggett said.
Before he could ask why he was being pulled over, Leggett said, “an officer got out, about 6-feet-four, and immediately started yelling and screaming at me, with profanity-laced words that you would not believe,” Leggett said. “The profanity, the aggressiveness, the language overall was very, very degrading.”
Another officer later got out of the car, an older, female officer, according to Leggett. “She recognized the face eventually. She approached me and said, ‘I did not know it was you, Mr. Leggett.’ What difference should that have made?
“Think, for example, if that was a young teenager, who would’ve panicked in that situation, what would’ve happened. This situation could’ve easily escalated,” Leggett said. This experience could’ve changed how a young person views police in the long-term, he said.
Leggett said he later asked Park Police for the dash cam footage from that evening.
“We have the (footage), but apparently we only have the last 30-40 seconds, when the senior officer is explaining why this incident started in the first place,” but the footage from the beginning of the encounter was missing.
“You see this kind of incident that happens to you personally, and you ask, ‘have we taken a step back?’”
Copyright 2015 by WMAL.com. All Rights Reserved. (PHOTO: Steve Burns/WMAL)
