North Dakota Human Rights Coalition
Working to effect change so that all people in North Dakota enjoy full human rights
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North Dakota Human Rights Coalition Working to effect change so that all people in North Dakota enjoy full human rights |
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J. D. – Interviewed 7/7/04
I was living in Hillsboro, ND when I experienced discrimination based on my race. I am an American Indian, as are my two daughters.
In May of 1997, my 15 year old daughter L. was riding her bike with a friend. There was only one stoplight in Hillsboro at the time, and L. and her friend were crossing through the crosswalk on their bikes when a Caucasian woman ran a red light and hit them with her car, causing both of them to flip over. The woman drove away, but returned several minutes later. When the woman returned, L. and her friend were getting up off of the ground. The woman asked if they were okay, but received no response from the girls. My daughter’s friend H. took her to the police station in town. Ten minutes later, the police called me to tell me what had happened. I asked why the girls were not taken to the hospital, but the deputy on the phone did not respond to my question. I then picked the girls up from the police station and drove them to the hospital, where a physician observed spasms in my daughter’s neck muscles. Both girls had large lumps on the backs of their heads from hitting the ground. My daughter was ordered to spend the night in the hospital for observation.
Between 10:30 and 11:00 PM, I returned to the police station to inquire as to whether or not the police had picked up the woman who hit the girls. The deputy who had called me earlier informed me that they had no plans of picking her up that night because she had called the station to apologize for the accident. The deputy informed me that he had plans to talk to her the next day. Somewhat angry at this point, I asked why the woman was not being picked up for leaving the scene of an accident or for hit-and-run. The deputy responded only with, “We’ll talk to her tomorrow”.
When I received the accident report from the police department, I noticed that the information was incorrect. The woman had testified that L. and H. were riding next to her car, not crossing the street, and that they had turned into her without using hand signals, making an accident unavoidable. I asked around and discovered that the deputy I’d been dealing with the entire time was a friend of this woman’s.
When I asked the police why they were using the woman’s story in the report and not my daughter’s or her friend’s, the aforementioned deputy came to my house, sat down with my daughter, and said, “This is how it happened…..”. He proceeded to tell L. that the woman’s story was correct and that hers was not. My husband, who was listening, asked the deputy to listen to L. and H’s stories and made it clear that he was not happy with the deputy coming into our house to basically call our daughter a liar.
The woman driving the car received no punishment for her actions in the incident. H, my daughter’s friend who was also hit in the accident, was cited $25 for breaking the antennae on the woman’s car.
Following the incident at our house, I talked with the Chief of Police to make him aware of my distaste with the deputy’s investigation procedure. He responded with, simply, “We’ll talk to him”. I waited for weeks, and finally decided to hire an attorney. When I asked the police station about hiring an attorney, the deputy told me that he had taken the report and my daughter’s story to the State’s Attorney and that the State’s Attorney had blown it off. Every time I walked into the courthouse to speak with an administrator or an attorney, the deputy would follow me through the building, asking me why I was there and what I was doing. He also pulled me over whenever he saw me driving in town. He would often try to site me for non-functional brake lights. Every time I got home from being pulled over, I would have my daughter stand behind the car while I pressed the brake pedal to check the lights. There were never any problems with the brake lights.
Throughout this entire ordeal, I received only the first copy of the accident report. I never received a final draft. So, I went into the police department and asked, several times, for the final copy. I brought a couple of attorneys with me to these visits, but the deputy refused to give me the final report. I expressed my concern regarding his multiple refusals and finally the police department decided to transfer the deputy to another department “until this whole thing [blew] over”.
As I waited for the police to conduct some sort of investigation, my daughter visited the hospital four times. The insurance company of the woman who hit H. and L. refused to pay any of the hospital bills, claiming that my daughter’s visits “were not associated to the injuries sustained in the accident”, when in fact all of her problems were associated with the accident. She had a minor head injury due to the accident, and was being seen for headaches and problems sleeping. She was also out of school for approximately three months.
After some time with nothing solved, I decided to file a lawsuit. Unfortunately, I could not convince any attorney to take my case because the police department claims to have nothing on file regarding the accident.
Out of frustration and disgust, I moved to Rollette, ND in 1999.
(This concludes the narrative provided by J. D. on Wednesday, July 7, 2004) Michael Brown, Jr.
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North Dakota Human Rights Coalition P.O. Box 1961 Fargo, North Dakota 58107-1961 Phone: (701) 239-9323 Fax: (701) 478-4452 Email: humanrights@ndhrc.org
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