“Defund the police” is all fun and games until you need a police officer.
Portland City Commissioner and avid Black Lives Matter supporter Jo Ann Hardesty called the police in nearby Washington state on November 1st after she got into an argument with a Lyft driver over his adherence to company protocols regarding COVID.
Amazingly, she says she did so “proactively” before the driver could call the police on her, a black woman.
KOIN reported:
The November 1 ride began when Lyft driver Richmond Frost picked up a passenger named “Jo Ann” at the casino. Frost kept the windows cracked — COVID protocols put in place by the ride share company — and Hardesty complained.
The ride went downhill from there and Frost decided to cancel the ride. He pulled off into a Chevron station at an I-5 exit ramp in Ridgefield. But Hardesty refused to get out of the car and called 911 at 9:48 p.m.
She reportedly told the dispatcher that he had dropped her off “in the dark at a filling station. And I’m not getting out. Not happening. All because I asked him to put the window up.”
She was told that since the car was Frost’s property and no crimes were involved, to which she said that she was “just going to sit here until he gets me another ride.”
“Only you can order another ride,” the dispatcher said (wait—why is it the dispatcher’s job to explain to her how Lyft works?) “I can have an officer come out but they’re not going to be able to make him stay there.”
Hardesty replied she wouldn’t leave Frost’s vehicle until another car arrived. The dispatcher said she’d send officers. She shouldn’t have.
Shortly afterwards, no doubt prompted by the fact that this woman was refusing to leave his personal property, Frost himself called the police.
“I knew that having him call the police (on Hardesty) would put me in danger,” Hardesty later told The Portland Tribune. “And so that’s why I proactively called 911.”
“I didn’t know how long I would have to wait,” she said of the prospect of standing at a filling station that had just closed at 10p.m., by herself, in the dark. “There was no way I was going to get out on the side of the road, in the dark, because some driver has an attitude, and decided I should just get out and just whatever happens happens.”
“I don’t call 911 lightly, but I certainly am not gonna do anything that would put my personal safety at risk,” she added. “It’s a lot harder when you are Black or brown in America to make that decision … But I ultimately had very limited options.”
The cognitive dissonance is almost palatable. She is trying so hard to carry the narrative that the police pose a threat to minorities, but that she needed to call the police for her own safety? This wasn’t a difficult decision for her. This was the easily enjoyed luxury of living in civil society—one she’s trying to destroy with her radical policies.
Recall when in July a black woman in Fredericksburg Virginia was driving in her car with her young daughter when her car was surrounded by Black Lives Matter marauders who climbed on her car. She called 9-1-1 and the police dispatcher refused to send help telling her to call City Hall to air her concerns. The terrified woman was eventually able to drive through. No police ever responded.
Recall when a white woman walking her dog in Central Park called 9-1-1 to report a black man threatening her about not having her dog on a leash. Her life was forever destroyed. She was charged with a crime, lost her job, and had to move from all the abuse after the incident went viral. This fate should have happened to City Commissioner Hardesty.
The Lyft driver should have rolled all the windows down, turned the A/C on full blast as well as the radio playing rock music at full volume. That would have gotten her out of his car.
Give me a break. These people are pathetic.
Talk about trying to have your cake and eat it too.
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