After a high-speed chase, Kentucky police officers approached the driver’s vehicle with guns drawn. However, the subsequent interaction between a white officer and a black female suspect made waves on the internet.
After receiving a call, Hodgenville Police engaged in the pursuit of 41-year-old Latrece Curry, who was traveling from Lebanon County into Green County. The pursuit turned dangerous when the driver reached speeds of nearly 90 mph, prompting officers to initiate a rolling roadblock maneuver in order to stop the fleeing suspect safely, WDRB reports.
Fortunately, the tactic worked, and Curry pulled into a grocery store parking lot. Fearing that the situation could easily become hostile, officers approached the vehicle with guns drawn, ordering the female driver to raise her hands and comply. Within seconds, the encounter took a 180-degree turn.
Curry had fled her home after a domestic dispute with her husband. As Hodgenville Police Chief James Richardson opened the door, his instinct kicked in. It was obvious to him that the woman was still in a state of panic from the incident with her husband, and a throng of armed police officers only terrified her more.
“As I come up to the driver’s side door, (another officer) said he had cover, so I went ahead and made contact with the driver and got her to open the door,” Richardson said. “She had her hands up. She was shaking like a leaf. It was obvious she was scared to death. The look on her face was absolute sheer terror.”
As tears streamed down the woman’s face, Richardson could see that the encounter called for something other than force. Once he assessed the situation and determined it to be safe, he holstered his weapon and sympathetically grasped Curry’s hands, he told the New York Post. In a heartbreaking move, she reached out to embrace the officer for comfort.
“Of course we had guns, guns pointed at her, so I just tried to calm her down. She was shaking so bad she couldn’t get her seatbelt off, so I helped her get her seatbelt off,” he recalled. “I didn’t perceive her as a threat, she didn’t have any weapons. I took control of her hands, she started crying. She reached out and hugged me and I just kind of hugged her back.”
As they shared the intimate moment, Curry explained to Richardson that she was in panic mode and wasn’t fully aware of what she was doing. She was still shaken up over the domestic dispute at her home and had acted on impulse.
“Her statement to me was she was just in the zone, she didn’t know what she was doing and she was extremely sorry. She had no criminal record to speak of, had never been in trouble that I know of. She just made a really bad choice,” Richardson said.
Although Richardson says the ordeal was one police officers typically aren’t prepared to handle, he managed to calm Curry so that they could take her into custody without incident. She was later charged with fleeing police, endangerment, and traffic violations.
After 23 years on the job, Police Chief James Richardson joked that it was the first time he has seen a police chase conclude with a loving embrace between the pursuant officer and the suspect.
“Compassion is a good thing to have, especially in policing. With everything going on in the world today, everybody makes mistakes,” he said.
Richardson explained that there couldn’t have been a better outcome for the situation. He also lamented that the minority of negative encounters with police often make the news while the vast majority of positive and non-violent engagements are ignored.
“Especially in this day and age with what you see on the news and Facebook and social media,” he said. “It was obvious that she was scared. Yeah, we’ve got a job to do, but she didn’t pose a threat. The people we deal with, they’re usually in a bad situation, and they’ve made mistakes. But we have to treat everybody with compassion, and we don’t know their situation. We don’t need to be the judge and jury.”
The police department praised Richardson’s response and hailed the situation as “a great example of keeping your emotions in check at the end of a pursuit.
Millions of peaceful interactions between police officers and suspects happen every year. However, the media deliberately focus on the few that go horribly wrong, hoping to paint a certain narrative.
