Prof. arrested after falsely claiming she was profiled
A college professor who claimed that she was racially profiled after receiving a ticket has been arrested and charged with making a false statement.
Minati Roychoudhuri, a professor of English at Capital Community College in Hartford, Connecticut, was ticketed in Wethersfield on May 9, 2015, after a state trooper witnessed her making an unsafe lane change. After receiving her citation, Roychoudhuri wrote a letter to the Commissioner of Emergency Services and Public Protection claiming that she was racially profiled. She alleged that the trooper asked her if she “spoke English.”
“The policeman asked me if I could speak English and if I knew why he had stopped me. I said, ‘yes’ to speaking English and ‘no’ to why he had stopped me,” she wrote in the letter. “The officer did not give me any reason as to why had stopped me. His asking if I could speak English shows that he had racially profiled me and was not able to give me a concrete reason for stopping me.”
Evidence from the officer’s dash and body cameras demonstrate this was not the case, and the conclusion of the investigation led to Roychoudhuri’s arrest.
FOX CT has a full transcript of the exchange between Roychoudhuri and the trooper:
Officer: Hi ma’am, do you know why I’m stopping you today?
Roychoudhuri: No
O: OK. There’s that big gore area with white lines painted across it and you cut in front of it, in front of me, thinking it’s a lane or something. You have to wait until it’s a dotted white line. License and registration.
[...]
O: Ma’am. So I wrote you the infraction for that improper lane change that you did.
R: Please, you know, I probably crossed over there, and that’s why I did it.
O: OK.
R: Obviously I did that.
O: [Inaudible]
R: My [inaudible] is absolutely clean.
O: Ok. So I wrote you an infraction for that improper lane change that you did.
R: OK.
Roychoudhuri is expected to appear in court on August 14.
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