If You’re a Black Woman, Cutting in Line May Get You 15 Years in Prison

Are You Serious???

By: AintThatIt | Mon, 10/26/2009 - 14:24

OK, everyone...Let's remove race from the issue of Heather Ellis altogether. Who among us hasn't done exactly what Ms. Ellis did or maybe went to the grocery store w/another person, or even by ourselves, and let's say forgot something and asked someone to hold our place while we went to retrieve it? The tone of how we are appoached dictates alot of how we respond when confronted w/ANY situation. It would be interesting to see the Walmart footage to see what really happened. Ms. Ellis and her cousin may be tagged as being inconsiderate, rude, petty or a plethera of other adjectives, but to be faced w/a felony and time in jail for an act such as this is ludicrous! Maybe Ms. Ellis should have excused herself, explained, play it off to the other patrons so that they would not have been slighted. Maybe she should have remained more calm when the clerk questioned her motives. But maybe by the time this whole ordeal escalted to levels where the law needed to be called seems a bit extreme. Maybe Ms. Ellis did lose her cool, but it sounds as though the people put in place to restore order (i.e. management at Walmart and police) could use some workshops to brush up on a few conflict resolution skills as well. I will keep Ms. Ellis, her family, and the town in which this incident happened in my prayers. If a police officer felt compelled enough to deliver ANY type of correspondence generated from the KKK to this family, there is an issue bigger and deeper than we, the human race, have the power to fix. That may require a divine intervention. Good Day!

Grossly inappropriate title...

By: Luminist | Sun, 10/25/2009 - 10:55

The illogical and misleading title of this article reminds me of another article written in the New York Daily News some years back. A man entered a crowded subway station without paying his fare ($1.50 at the time). A police woman confronted him and ordered him to stop where he was, which he refused to do. They got into a heated argument and the man pulled the officer's gun from its holster and opened fire on her. He missed, but he himself was seriously injured when the cop's partner returned fire. Guess what the headline read: "Cop shoots man over $1.50".

Slanted racist article

By: joeblow | Fri, 10/23/2009 - 10:27

You should be ashamed of yourselves for giving this article such a biased racist slant.

This woman couldn't do something as simple as go shopping without being rude inconsiderate and abusive. Eventually she wasn't even able to explain the situation to a cop without making things even worse.

Her story about a cop delivering a letter from the KKK borders on ludicrous.

Maybe she belongs in jail or a mental hospital.

Yeah, it's not a possible 15

By: you know it is | Thu, 10/22/2009 - 20:43

Yeah, it's not a possible 15 years for cutting in line, it's a possible 15 years for disturbing the peace, trespassing, and assaulting a police officer. The two are substantially different.

I don't see that we can blame the possible 15-year-sentence on the fact that she's black, unless we think that the charges are unreasonable (i.e. we think the police account is false; note that I am not discounting that possibility, but I can't tell whether or not Ms. Bans' comments are predicated on the position that the police account is false and that improper charges were filed, or if she accepts the police account but her complaints still stand). Presumably the possible 15 years comes from state legislation, and whether or not she's female or black could have no impact on that. The only way her race and sex could figure in is if we think that that affects the charges filed. If the police account is correct, those sound like pretty reasonable charges. It seems the people to complain to about the possible 15 year sentence if one thinks it unreasonable as a possibility for those charges would be the Missouri state legislature.

Now, if she actually receives 15 years, presumably the people about whom one would complain would be either the judge or the people responsible for the sentencing guidelines (if such guidelines exist and the sentencing is consistent with them). (Afterthought: or the police if she is convicted on the basis of false evidence from the police; note that this returns us to the central question of what actually happened.) If a harsh sentence is received, and if one can make a case that a person who was not black, or not a woman, or both, as the case may be, would likely have received a less harsh sentence, then there might be a reasonable case that she has been a victim of racism or sexism or both (actually, there's a fourth possibility, the treatment could depend nonlinearly on sex and race, preventing it from being broken into "racism" or "sexism" parts i.e. there can exist raciosexism that neither a person of different race or different sex alone would experience, but this isn't really relevant to our discussion here. Or maybe it is, since Ms. Bans specifically mentioned "black woman" in the headline. My understanding was that North American justice systems typically treat women more leniently than men, however.)

Certainly, if the police treatment of her was overly brutal or she was somehow treated unfairly, then there's an element of injustice. On the one hand, people of all races and sexes experience similar injustices at the hands of the police. On the other hand, the (entirely plausible, to me) claim is that for some races, the statistical distribution of unjust behavior experienced is worse than for other races (and presumably the same situation could exist for sex/race combinations as well), in which case, one could partition the quantity of injustice experienced by the woman into a background part that represents the common race- and sex-independent level experienced by everyone, and a quantity which can be attributed to her race and sex. (Note however, there's no guarantee that the race/sex dependent excess can be split into race-dependent and sex-dependent parts; that's the racio-sexual cross term at work.)

Racist black woman thinks she can beat up innocent white cop!

By: patron002 | Thu, 10/22/2009 - 19:25

What does my Subject line have in common with Bans? It's completely made up, taking a certain set of facts, and twisting them to your own twisted fantasy. I like how many people believe its ok to beat up a "white" cop. Oh hes white and he has a badge, that means he has to take whatever abuse a person wants to give him. I don't know if she deserves 15 years or not, I don't know the facts of the case, all I know is the lame attempt by Ban to completely dismiss horrible behavior is concerning.. A woman should not be punished for, by Bans own account ( I dont know what happened I do know what Ban said) the woman verbally abused staff, then refused to leave private property, Then resisted arrest, and in all likelyhood attacked a police officer. Sorry, but dismissing this as OK behavior is disturbing. Furthermore, assuming racism without knowing the fact is not to the benefit to people who actually face racism.

I find it outrageous

By: fsilber | Thu, 10/22/2009 - 16:38

I find it outrageous that, even in this day and age, a woman who feels that what she did is no big deal cannot get away with assaulting a pushy police officer.

Is this the best we can do?

By: Colage | Thu, 10/22/2009 - 16:29

I realize with the nature of the internet, it's impractical to stop and think about a story before you write it. But this is just inexcusably sloppy.

"If You’re a Black Woman, Cutting in Line May Get You 15 Years in Prison" - if I may suggest a revision: "Being Belligerent after Cutting in Line, Refusing to Leave Private Property When Asked, and Taking Swings at a Police Officer May Get You a Maximum of 15 Years in Prison Regardless of Your Gender or Racial Background."

This blog post is horribly misrepresentative. According to the source that apparently got the author so worked up, the reports are that Ellis was being unacceptably aggressive, refused to leave when asked, again refused to leave with the Police asked her to, and then took some swings at the officer. I suppose if she were a white man, the cops would have high-fived him and let him go about his day.

I don't know when the Klan angle became fact. The Root article that this cites itself gets that information from a blog with a grand total of four posts. (newsreleasenow.blogspot.com)

Is this what we get from a website affiliated with the Washington Post and Slate? If I wanted crass, exploitative, and poorly-researched short-form journalism, I could just read TMZ.

Not enough info

By: Kit-Kat | Thu, 10/22/2009 - 16:16

As far as I understand it, Wal-Mart is not obligated to release its security tapes to the public, although it is obligated to provide them in response to a subpoena for use as evidence. So the fact that they aren't releasing them really doesn't prove anything one way or the other, so long as they provide them when required to by a court.

From this story, it is quite clear to me that the KKK is racist, although, of course, we all knew that already. It's not so obvious that the charges themselves are evidence of racism, however, since I have no idea what Ms. Ellis actually did prior to her arrest. Was she yelling and behaving in a disorderly and disruptive fashion? Did she refuse to leave when ordered to by the store manager? Did she hit the police officer? Did Wal-Mart make the whole story up? Did the police officer lie in his affidavit? I don't know, and neither does Ms. Bans (unless she has another source of information she's not linking to).

Further, the story doesn't say what the race of the store clerk or the store manager or the police officer or the prosecutor is. It provides no evidence of racism on the part of either Wal-Mart or law enforcement, other than Ms. Ellis's own race.

The potential penalties have no meaning, since they merely represent the maximum possible penalties for the crimes as provided for in the law and not the actual penalties that Ms. Ellis would likely face if convicted. She could just as easily get 30 days or probation.

Is the story plausible?

By: Punditus Maximus | Thu, 10/22/2009 - 16:14

Of course it is. Remember how quickly the police officer's story changed with respect to attacking a New York bicyclist during Critical Mass once the tape surfaced?

I hope the security tape isn't "lost," and I hope that Ms. Ellis wins her inevitable and subsequent lawsuit.

This sounds like it may've

By: auros | Thu, 10/22/2009 - 16:09

This sounds like it may've been as much a case of escalating misunderstanding and poor impulse control, as a case of "racist" behavior. OK, so she didn't exactly "cut" in line -- she was just joining a family member in the line (which is a practice of dubious fairness, even though many people do it). But when the other customer shoved her, she should've maintained a nonviolent posture and tried to make her position clear to the employees. At every step along the way, it sounds like (fro the article in the SEMissourian) she reacted in a vengeful, irrational manner -- up to and including striking police officers.

Now, maybe the store security video will be subpoenaed, and vindicate her -- showing that she did not act as badly as the report makes it sound. But from the report, it seems like this is a poor case for the NAACP to be taking on. It's not like the Gates case, where the police officer clearly overstepped his authority -- as soon as he saw that Gates was in his own home, he had no reason to remain on the property, and should have left. (Maybe Gates was acting like a pompous jerk, but that's not a crime.) When a store employee asks you to leave the property, you put down the stuff you were planning to buy, and you leave. Maybe you file a complaint later, or even sue for discrimination; but you leave. Similarly, when the cops say you're under arrest, you do not hit them. You can file a claim for false arrest later, but hitting the police is NOT OK.