Police harassing residents of Hillcrest

asheville | copwatch | news report Wednesday August 29, 2007 23:32 by micah

On Tuesday night, August 28, shortly after 8pm, I witnessed police harassing two young black men from the Hillcrest housing projects on Montford Ave. When I showed up, the two men were pulled over in separate cars on opposite sides of the road, and there five Asheville Police squad cars and a Buncombe County Sheriff deputy car there.

There was a small crowd of people witnessing what was going on. One woman, who said she was the aunt of one of the people getting pulled over, was videotaping it to later show to lawyers. She said her nephew was a straight-A student at Asheville High, and he was getting harassed tonight because he lived in Hillcrest and he had dreadlocks.

She said that police harass residents of Hillcrest on a daily basis, and recently they've been targeting people with dreadlocks, I believe she said because police think there's an alleged drug dealer with dreadlocks who lives in Hillcrest. She also told me about an instance when police tried to illegally enter a home in Hillcrest. Pisgah Legal Services (http://www.pisgahlegal.org/) had given Hillcrest residents know-your-rights sheets about what police are allowed to do on your property and what they're not, and even after showing this to the police, they still attempted to enter the apartment.

The young men getting pulled over and the onlookers were all obviously angry about the harassment. Police ended up ticketing one of the men with a noise violation because he was listening to music in his car (after the police left and the young man turned his car back on, the stereo came back on, and, though a little loud, it was set to a completely reasonable volume). After getting the ticket, with the cops still there, a car with a white person driving drove by playing loud music, and the cops didn't do anything. The other young man got a ticket as well, but I'm not sure what it was for.

It's absurd that it takes six cop cars, all full of white cops, to ticket two young black men from Hillcrest. I encourage other people who are witnesses to or victims of police harassment to post stories and, if possible, photos and video, to Asheville Indymedia.