On June 29th 2013, Gabriella Calhoun’s life changed forever. The night was warm and clear, and after partying with friends, Gabriella and her friends decided to go to their local neighborhood Denny’s to get a late night meal. Gabby is an honor student at Wiley College. She finished high school a year early and went to college a year before the rest of her cohort.
Sitting on the left side of Denny’s so they can have a view of the parking lot, her crew of 17, all high school graduates, witnessed a fight between two girls. As the group of college bound students were ordering their drinks, the cops were called.
When officers arrived on the scene, they entered the Denny’s and approached Gabriella’s table and asked if they had anything to do with the fight. A friend, who shall remain nameless, told the officers that they were not involved with the fight at all at which the cops left and went back outside.
The two girls who were fighting outside were allowed to go into the Denny’s to “clean themselves up.” One girl was previously maced by a police officer in the parking lot for acting unruly. When the two girls saw each other inside of Denny’s, they started to fight again. The cops rushed into the restaurant to break the fight up.
As the cops tried to clear Denny’s, they again approached Gabriella’s table, at which a close friend of hers told the cops they were not involved with the party that was fighting. The cops grabbed the nameless young man, (he wants his name protected out of fear of retaliation), and escorted him out of Denny’s. Gabriella followed them and grabbed his side. As she exited the Denny’s she felt a grip on her neck and arm and says that out of reaction, she tried to pull away.
What happened next was unimaginable. According to her friends, Gabriella was hit in the face with a night stick by a female officer and was knocked unconscious. When Gabriella finally gained consciousness, the Wiley College Student said, “I awoke spitting my teeth out on the ground.”
Gabriella then stated, “When I came to, the officer begin to choke me again. When I was finally able to talk, I asked the officer to please let me go because I have asthma, but she [the officer], said, ‘I don’t care if you have asthma. You were hitting my officer.’”
“Afterward, the officer kept saying over and over again, ‘how was your party’ as she held my face to the ground.”
The female cop then lifted the petite honor student off of the ground, at which her b*****s were exposed because the tube top shirt she was wearing had rolled down. She asked the officer if she could please pull up her shirt, but the officer told her to do it herself. She then walked Gabriella all the way from the front of the Denny’s to the back where the cop cars were.
Gabriella was then sent to the precinct where she was booked on one charge of felony aggravated battery and two misdemeanors for resisting arrest.
“I think this is racial profiling not only by the Bloomington police department but also by Denny’s,” stated Lynia Cooper, friend of the victim. “Nobody else in Denny’s had to leave except the African Americans in that area. The police didn’t hear us out and ultimately used cruel and unusual force on Gabby.”
Cooper added, “Might I add the police didn’t even arrest the females that were involved in the altercations.”
Suffice to say, Gabriella is distraught and saddened by the ordeal.
“The whole situation is out of hand,” stated the frightened teen. “I don’t deserve this and now I hate to look in the mirror. When I look at what I use to look like to what I look like now, it hurts. I had the prettiest smile but now I have 3 fake teeth in my mouth. Nothing is the same. I have to train myself to talk with my new teeth.”
These cops got some cotdamn ‘splainin’ to do! The article states that Dr. Boyce Watkins is planning to meet with Rev. Al and Jesse Jackson this week to get their 2 cents on this case.
Sounds like the makings of another sad national story about black kids suffering at the hands of overzealous police.
