“You want my badge number?”
“Yes.”
“After all this?”
“I believe I have the right to know who detained me.”
The younger officer looked uncomfortable.
Whitmore stepped closer.
“You people always have something to say.”
Camille held his gaze.
“I am asking a simple question.”
He leaned toward her.
“Listen to me, you ghetto trash. You don't tell me how to do my job.”
The words hung in the air.
The man beneath the barber shop awning had begun recording.
A woman in a nearby car lowered her window.
The younger officer looked at Whitmore as if he could not believe what he had just heard.
Camille said nothing.
She reached into her purse and took out her phone.
Whitmore grabbed it.
“Put that away.”
“You cannot take my phone.”
“Are you refusing a lawful order?”
“I am asking you not to take my property.”
He twisted her arm again.
This time, the younger officer stepped forward.
“Daniel, that's enough.”
Whitmore turned on him.
“Stay out of it.”
He pushed Camille toward the cruiser.
She stumbled.
Her knee struck the curb.
The pain was immediate and sharp.
She tried to steady herself, but Whitmore seized her other arm and forced her against the hood of the police vehicle.
“Stop resisting!”
People were shouting now.
Someone yelled that they had called 911.
Another person said they were recording everything.
Camille could hear the rain, the sirens in the distance, and the pounding of her own heart.
She was frightened.
But she remembered her mother's voice.
Don't let anyone take your name.
“My name is Camille Renee Carter,” she said clearly. “I am not resisting. I have done nothing wrong.”
Whitmore cuffed her.
He placed her in the back of the cruiser.
For the next forty minutes, she sat in the locked vehicle while the rain soaked through her clothes.
No one explained why she was being detained.
No one offered medical assistance.
When she asked to call her mother, Whitmore told her to be quiet.
At 8:01 p.m., the cruiser finally moved.
Camille watched the familiar streets disappear behind the rain-covered window.
She had no idea that the video recorded outside the barber shop would reach thousands of people within hours.
She had no idea that her name would become a trending topic.
And she had no idea that Officer Daniel Whitmore had just made the biggest mistake of his career.
At the Riverton Police Department, Camille was taken to an interview room.
The fluorescent lights hummed overhead.
A metal table stood in the center of the room, with two chairs on opposite sides.
Whitmore removed her handcuffs.
“Sit.”
Camille sat.
Her left wrist was swollen, and her knee throbbed beneath her trousers.
She looked at him.
“Am I being charged with something?”
Whitmore opened a folder.
“Interfering with a police investigation.”
“What investigation?”
“That's not your concern.”
“I was driving home.”
“You were obstructing officers during an active investigation.”
“I asked you for your badge number.”
“And you refused to comply.”
Camille stared at him.
“That's not what happened.”
Whitmore closed the folder.
“You want to make this difficult?”
“No.”
“Then cooperate.”
“I have been cooperating.”
He leaned across the table.
“Do you know how many people would love to have your problems?”
Camille said nothing.
He continued.
“You should be grateful we're not making this worse.”
She looked down at her swollen wrist.
For the first time, she understood that the officer was not confused about what had happened.
He knew exactly what he had done.
He simply believed that he could get away with it.
An hour later, a desk sergeant entered the room.
He was older, with gray hair and tired eyes.
“Officer Whitmore,” he said, “we have a problem.”
Whitmore turned.
“What?”