On August 12, 2021, 21-year-old Trinity Clark thought she was going to die. The college student was leaving her house to go to a friend’s when Knoxville, Tennessee police officer Joseph Roberts stopped talking to a woman he had pulled over, and decided to go after Clark instead. And he went fast.
“... when you see a police officer, there’s a certain type of way we have to start acting,” Clark said. So she tried to draw less attention to herself. Still, Roberts sped to pull her over, then grabbed her once she was out of her car.
Kicking and screaming, Clark ended up with her sports bra ripped off, handcuffed and facedown on the ground. Clark was then handed six criminal charges, including a felony for “evading arrest.”
That was, until Roberts’ lengthy string of lies came to light.
Roberts told multiple lies to cover up the ways he broke departmental policy to pursue Clark’s car. He lied about being physically swarmed by bystanders when only two onlookers asked what was happening from afar.
But after all those lies, and even after Roberts resigned, the trauma of the arrest still follows Clark wherever she goes.
Police don’t just lie rampantly. They hurt us, intentionally and without remorse – leaving us to reckon with the damage for years to come.