U: Today is August 19, 2015 and you are…
A: Latoya Simpson.
U: Tell us your story Latoya.
A: I was recently at CSU, me and my boyfriend. I would say we experienced racial profiling simply because we were in there doing nothing but watching TV and on our phones.
U: Where were you again?
A: Cleveland State University. Right across the street. Officers came in. I don’t know if they were called or not. They claimed that they got a call that we were sleeping outside, which was not true. And you know, they saw that we weren’t. They said well do you guys have any ID’s, any you know personal information on you. We said no. They asked for our names and our birthdays. We gave it to them. They ran our names. I was clear, my boyfriend wasn’t. They had to call the Cleveland police, because they were only CSU police. They had to call the Cleveland police to see if they wanted him for the warrant. They did and they took him. The reason I said it was racial profiling: There are a lot of people in CSU who don’t go to school there and don’t work there. But it’s a, it’s a student part in there where you just go in there and lounge around. And they had chose to pick us out of everybody in there. There was a lady in there who was a lawyer in New York City and she was in the sideline asking us questions. Like you know did you ask them to read your rights, did they tell y’all you’ve been obtained. You know, we didn’t know all those things. As they are asking us questions, she is telling us things. She like, well my name is [redacted], I’m from New York City, take my number. She is helping us with the case now.
U: Thank you.
A: Thank you.