Black Woman Arrested and Charged After Defacing ‘Back the Blue’ Sign In Front of Police Officer
A Utah woman’s heated response to an officer’s treatment of her and a friend has landed her in jail. Lauren Gibson, 19, and her friends were driving back to California from a camping trip in Panguitch, Utah, when they were pulled over and ticketed for speeding before they made it out of the small town. After witnessing the reportedly aggressive behavior of the officer. Gibson was feeling outraged enough to want to “stand up” for her friend and try to “make her feel better.”
Gibson pulled out an old “Back the Blue” sign that she’d picked up earlier in the day and waved it at the officer before stomping on it and throwing it in the trash according to The Daily Beast. Gibson was arrested and charged with “disorderly conduct and criminal mischief with a hate-crime enhancement for her attempt to ‘intimidate law enforcement,” according to a affidavit obtained by The Daily Beast.
The affidavit goes into explaining the officer’s account of what took place, reporting that “Gibson stomped on the ‘Back the Blue’ sign, crumbled it up ‘in a destructive manner’ and threw it into a trash can—’all while smirking in an intimidating manner.’
Gibson now says. “I don’t feel like I did anything wrong. If it was a dentist’s sign or something and I just crushed a dentist sign or something in front of them, like, nothing would have happened. It’s the same thing. it’s just an occupation.”
Experts agree that the punishment does not fit the crime. “This doesn’t really seem to meet the criteria for what we would generally consider a hate crime, nor the specific language of the statute,” Seth Brysk, a Utah regional director with the Anti-Defamation League said.
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