Ferguson: Man Busted For Sitting In His Car & Smoking A Cigarette In His Aunt's Driveway [View all]
Joshua Hampton saw the big black police truck from down the block. He saw the lights, and the officers in military garb clinging to the sides. He wasn’t worried. It was around 2 a.m. Sunday, two hours after the new curfew mandated for Ferguson, Mo., but Hampton was sitting in his own car, smoking a cigarette in his aunt’s driveway. He thought he was obeying the law.
But the truck stopped and suddenly, Hampton says, his car was surrounded by police. “Put your (expletive) hands up!” he says they told him.
And then Hampton and his friends became among the seven people arrested the first night after Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D) declared a state of emergency in the St. Louis suburb. Nixon’s decision came a week after 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed in an officer-involved shooting, sparking protests in the community.
“They kept telling me to get out of the car, but I didn’t want to make any kind of movement,” Hampton, 30, told The Post in a phone interview Sunday.
The officer by his window had a gun pointed at his chest, says Hampton, who provided a copy of his arrest report to the Washington Post. He wanted to make sure the police could see his hands at all times, and he was afraid to reach down for the door lock. Finally, the officer reached in through the open window and opened the door himself.
MORE:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/08/17/i-just-kept-asking-why-am-i-being-arrested-for-sitting-in-my-aunts-driveway/
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