Body-camera footage of a Thanksgiving day arrest has resurfaced on social media of a Florida woman who compared herself to a ‘Black kid on a bike’ as she was being arrested.
Ashlee Morgan, 38, was driving recklessly through a St. Petersburg, Florida, neighborhood in her 2019 Range Rover Velar on Nov. 24, 2022, before she was stopped by local law enforcement and then arrested.
It was reported that she was going 60 miles per hour as she approached several streets that were blocked off due to an annual Coffee Pot Turkey Trot 5k race, which had over 3,000 participants.
Morgan avoided officers as they attempted to get her to slow down and stop on two different occasions before officers eventually caught up with her.
As officers approached the vehicle, Morgan begin to yell at officers, and seemed irate that she was being stopped.
“It’s freaking Thanksgiving, I just had a divorce, and my f*****g daughter is not with me,” Morgan yelled at the officers.
The officers repeatedly asked her to turn off her engine and step out the car.
“What the f*** is this? I am trying to get home,” screamed Morgan.
She eventually stepped out of the vehicle and was immediately placed in handcuffs. The emotional woman then began to beg and plead with officers to not get arrested. Officers obviously ignored her attempts and began to place her in the back of a police cruiser.
Surveillance video inside the cruiser showed Morgan attempted to compare herself to a Black person being racially profiled by police.
Morgan asked, “What I am some Black kid on the bike whose in the wrong neighborhood?”
The officers replied, “That’s ridiculous.”
“No you’re definitely treating me like a colored person,” responded Morgan as officers closed her door.
The video prompted several responses from Black people on social media.
“Now you know how we are perceived,” wrote on Twitter user.
“This is EXACTLY what they think of every last one of us no matter the shade, job, disability, gender….Etc….all they see is a COLOR of skin but wanna be us so bad & are threatened by us because of our gifts, beauty, and complexion……Everyone on earth has a color to their skin. I hope she Rots EXACTLY where she belongs,” wrote another.
Another user wrote, “She understands the injustice that happens to Black kids on bicycles. Right narrative wrong scenario. She did wrong so she is having consequences.”
Other social media users suggested that she was attempting to get sympathy from officers by using racism.
“Tryna get brownie points with the police by being racist (hand over face emoji),” wrote one user.
As for Morgan, she was charged with reckless driving, resisting an officer without violence, two counts of fleeing and eluding police and leaving the scene of a crash with property damage.
