Who is Charlotte Carter? Activist accuses Virginia cops of racially profiling POCs before being pulled over herself
CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, VIRGINIA: An activist for racial justice gathered evidence that local cops were ticketing people of color before getting pulled over in a hilariously sarcastic and popular TikTok video. Charlotte Carter said that she would not back down in the face of what she considers to be an intimidation campaign. In the video, released on Sunday, January 8, 2023, Carter was stopped by a police officer whom she claimed preyed disproportionately on Black and Brown people. She then accuses the police officer of racial discrimination.
“Mr Scott, you pull over 80 percent Black people. I went through all of your tickets for six months…only 20 percent of the population of Chesterfield [County] is Black,” Carter tells the officer standing next to her window, adding, “I don’t know how you managed to ticket 80 percent minorities.” Carter chuckles as she fills out her information after receiving a ticket, accusing him of being "gung-ho" about targeting people of color.
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“The last six months, you had ticketed—from when I did this about a month or two ago—you had ticketed 250 people in Chesterfield that had gone to Chesterfield court,” she said. In the video, she compares Scott to another officer who reportedly only penalized 240 individuals in an entire year. “But you, I only had to go back six months. You sure do write a lot of tickets,” Carter laughs as she returns the signed ticket to the officer. Carter claimed in an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast that the officer had followed her for two to three miles before pulling her over for allegedly turning right at a red light.
Carter, an Iranian American, stated that Virginia police first became interested in her in the spring of 2022 after she began investigating a case of alleged child abuse involving a multiracial friend of her son. She said that as a nurse, she was required to report the issue because she had seen that the infant was bruised and dangerously underweight. But she kept checking on the case because she thought the local police were reluctant to react and didn't take the child's wellbeing seriously as his father was Black.
Although someone was eventually detained by the authorities in connection with the incident, Carter claimed she didn't think they were taking the situation seriously until she released a TikTok about the alleged assault in March. The video has received around 5 million views.
Carter claimed that the Chesterfield police department suddenly appeared in her life. “I ended up trying to file for emergency custody, but the police began falsely arresting me,” she said. She was arrested by authorities in April for trespassing on her own land. “They also added on three additional charges for contributing to the delinquency of a minor for each one of my three children because I encouraged them to trespass into our home,” she said.
Carter was inspired by the experience to conduct a study on Chesterfield's policing techniques. Carter gave The Daily Beast all the data she obtained using the publicly accessible Chesterfield District Court website, which showed the arrest demographics of Scott, the officer she faced in the TikTok video.
According to the statistics which she also provided in a TikTok video, the officer had stopped 53 drivers in six months, mostly in October. Each traffic or criminal court defendant's race is displayed on the district court website. Thirty of the drivers were Black, with 13 being White. The race of the ten was unknown, although their surnames appeared to be Hispanic or Arabic. Carter stated that she randomly investigated Scott and another officer to determine the racial makeup of recorded stops within the area.
While she stated that being pulled over on Sunday, January 8, was a coincidence given her anti-racism activities, she couldn't believe it when she saw the officer's badge. “As I was going to sign the ticket, I saw his name was S Scott,” Carter said, adding, “And when I saw S Scott on that paper, I just turned my camera on record.”
Only when she was the target of a less-than-subtle Facebook post by Chesterfield County Police Chief Jeffrey Katz in April did she realize she was on the police's radar.
Even though she has been arrested numerous times, Carter stated she will continue to criticize the police because she finds it to be "empowering". “The wheels of justice are very, very slow, and it takes patience and persistence and not giving up,” Carter told The Daily Beast. “I stand for what I believe in at all costs. I’m willing to die on this hill,” she added.