Texas police ticketed a pregnant Black woman for allegedly walking on the wrong side of the road while she was looking for her dog in an incident she calls “an excessive force of power,” according to reports.
Akia Townes was trying to retrieve her dog just two houses down from where she lives, walking on the right side of Madison Boulevard in Groves on Wednesday when police approached her.
“Two cops stopped me. They walked out with their hands on their guns, and then they asked me to see my ID,” Townes told KFDM.
Brad Townes, her husband who is white, started filming his wife’s exchange with law enforcement on his phone. “Can’t walk while Black in Groves,” he can be heard repeatedly saying in the video as he captured officers talking to his wife.
“They got crackheads, robbers, all this other stuff but they want to arrest a Black person — a pregnant Black woman — for looking for her dog,” she says in the video to her husband as she stands between two officers.
If a sidewalk is not provided, according to the Texas Transportation Code, a pedestrian must walk on the “left side of the roadway” unless that side is obstructed.
“I feel like they looked and saw an easy target that nobody was going to come and defend and that nobody was going to come help,” he told the outlet.
“It’s just very an excessive force of power for me just trying to go and find my dog,” Akia told KFDM.
“You could have easily said ‘hey ma’am,’ and I could have explained to you what I was trying to do, but then you threatened my husband and threatened me to go to jail,” she continued, noting she hired an attorney to fight the ticket.
“I felt I was racially profiled while walking down my own street,” she wrote on Facebook on Friday. “The excessive use of force on a small black pregnant woman was [too] much, I will forever be traumatized from this situation. I don’t feel safe in my own neighborhood, not from people but from the police department.”
An attorney for Townes also believes this incident was racially motivated.
“It’s not a question of whether she was breaking the law,” Langston Adams, an attorney for the couple, told KFDM. “We believe it’s selective enforcement and racial profiling. Why didn’t the husband get a ticket? He was also walking on the wrong side of the road and he’s white. I believe they used her walking on the wrong side of the road as a pretext to stop her.”
Groves City Marshal Chris Robin, and shared by the local police, addressed the “concerns” raised about how law enforcement handled the incident, which has since gone viral on social media, in a statement.
“We understand the concerns raised regarding recent enforcement actions by our officers and want to take this opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to transparency, accountability, and equal treatment for all members of our community,” he said.
All officers “must ensure public safety and apply the law fairly and consistently—without bias or prejudice,” he continued. “In this particular case, officers were enforcing provisions of the Texas Transportation Code, a responsibility they are legally and ethically required to perform. Enforcement of the law is not selective, and no one is above it.”
“We want to be absolutely clear: discrimination of any kind—including racial discrimination—is not tolerated in this department. Allegations of misconduct are taken seriously and thoroughly investigated through appropriate channels,” Robin added.
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