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‘I Don’t Feel Like I Did Anything Wrong’: Young Black Woman Faces Prison Time and Hate Crime Charge for Defacing ‘Back the Blue’ Sign In Front of Police Officer

A young Utah woman’s heated yet unthreatening response to an officer’s treatment of her and a friend landed her in jail.

Nineteen-year-old Lauren Gibson and her friends were driving back to California from a camping trip in Panguitch, Utah, when the group was pulled over and ticketed for speeding before they made it out of the small town. After witnessing the allegedly aggressive behavior of the officer, Gibson was left feeling upset enough to want to “stand up” for her friend and try to “make her feel better.” However, in doing so, she ended up on the wrong side of the law.

Blue Lives Matter supporters hold flags as Black Lives Matter rally against them on October 7, 2020. (Staff Photo By Matt Stone/ MediaNews Group/Boston Herald)

In response to the officer’s treatment, Gibson pulled out an old “Back the Blue” sign that she’d picked up earlier in the day and waved it at the officer before stomping on it and throwing it in the trash, a gesture that the Garfield County Sheriff’s deputy perceived as “intimidating.”

Shortly thereafter, Gibson was arrested and charged with “disorderly conduct and criminal mischief with a hate-crime enhancement for her attempt to ‘intimidate law enforcement,” according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by The Daily Beast.

The affidavit goes into more detail of the officer’s account of what occurred, reporting that “Gibson stomped on the ‘Back the Blue’ sign, crumbled it up ‘in a destructive manner’ and threw it into a trash can—’all while smirking in an intimidating manner.’

Gibson feels that she was simply expressing her freedom of speech and her actions didn’t warrant such a serious response, noting that had she done the same thing to anyone of a different profession, the outcome would have been much different. “I don’t feel like I did anything wrong,” she said. “If it was a dentist’s sign or something and I just crushed a dentist sign or something in front of them, like, nothing would have happened. It’s the same thing. it’s just an occupation.”

She also recounted an instance of feeling threatened during the night she spent in jail when the arresting officer asked her if she knew what happened to the last person that got arrested for this, referring to the August 2020 case of a man being arrested for a similar infraction and charged with a hate crime. He was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to two days in jail and a year of probation.

Experts agree that the punishment does not fit the crime.“This doesn’t really seem to meet the criteria for what we would generally consider a hate crime, nor the specific language of the statute,” said Seth Brysk, a Utah regional director with the Anti-Defamation League.

Gibson is holding out hope that a more suitable agreement is reached with the prosecutor’s office, but is currently facing up to one year in jail for her charges.

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