A white Cobb County police officer who County Commissioner Lisa Cupid accused of profiling her during the early morning hours July 14 was involved last month in a traffic stop of an African-American, during which he told the driver: "I don't care about your people."
Officer Maurice Lawson has been reassigned to a new police precinct pending an ongoing investigation into the incident, and the police department has issued a letter of apology to the driver, 33-year-old middle school teacher Brian Baker of Fulton County.
Cobb police have acknowledged that Lawson violated department policy, and reduced the two tickets Baker received that night to warnings, according to Baker’s attorney, Kimberly Bandoh.
A police spokesman declined to comment, saying the incident is under investigation and it could take weeks to complete.
But Baker received a Nov. 24 letter from Capt. J.D. Adcock, which says Lawson violated the department’s code of conduct and calls the violation “very serious.”
“Officer Lawson’s conduct as he spoke with you does not meet our high standards, has brought discredit to the department and himself, and is not now nor will ever be tolerated,” the letter says.
The stop happened about 2 a.m. Nov. 16 on Mableton Parkway and the entire incident was captured on Lawson’s dash board camera, although some of the exchange is inaudible on the video, which can be seen on myAJC.com.
After Lawson gave Baker two tickets — for speeding and failure to maintain lane — Baker asked if he could leave. Lawson appears to mock him by repeating the question over and over. Lawson then says: “Leave. Go away. Go to Fulton County. I don’t care about your people, man, go.”
Baker then questioned the officer about what that comment meant.
“I said Fulton County,” Lawson replies. After that, the men talk over one another until Lawson says: “Do you want to step out and talk to me?”
“Why do you need me to step out of the car?” Baker asks.
“Go back to Fulton County, sir.”
Baker then drove off, and Lawson said to two other officers at the scene: “I lose my cool, man, every time. Why do I got to deal with (stuff) like that. This is the (expletive) America we live in, ain’t it?”
The other officers are not identified.
Baker told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Thursday that he thinks Lawson should lose his job.
“I’m a teacher. If I say something like that to a child, there would be a firestorm and immediately I would lose my job,” Baker said during an interview in his attorney’s office. “Obviously, he’s not there to protect and serve me, or people of color.”
Cupid, who is African-American, was caught up in a firestorm this summer, after she complained about Lawson following her so aggressively that she thought he was going to ram her from behind. She said of that experience with Lawson that he "was not there to protect and serve. He was there to harass and intimidate."
Cupid was leaving a hotel during the early morning hours, after studying for the bar examination, when Lawson began following her in an undercover car, with tinted windows and only one working headlight. The commissioner, who has seen the Baker video, said she met with Lawson and his precinct commander earlier this week, and left that meeting with a “headache.”
“The video at the very least demonstrates some question about this officer’s level of judgment,” Cupid said. “I could easily be jumping up and down and pointing the fingure right now. That’s not the action I want to take. I’m just being very watchful about how they respond.”
Cupid said of her incident that the officer would not have followed a white driver in a more "affluent" part of the county. She was heavily criticized — by members of the public and by her fellow commissioners — and complained that county leadership didn't adequately respond to her questions and concerns. Police investigation found that Lawson did not violate departmental policy in his encounter with Cupid.
Commissioner Bob Weatherford said Cupid's complaint "has created division that in my view may impede her ability to govern her district."
Weatherford said he hadn’t seen the dash board video of the Baker incident when contacted Thursday, and said he wouldn’t get involved in an ongoing police investigation.
“I get involved when a fellow commissioner throws the police department under the bus,” Weatherford said in explaining why he inserted himself in Cupid’s complaint. “She was followed because of her suspicious acts leaving a parking lot in a known crime area at a high rate of speed at 2 o’clock in the morning.”
Cupid's account of the incident is that she was studying at the hotel near Six Flags for her bar examination — which she passed — leisurely walked out to her car with the hotel manager and had a five-minute conversation with him before leaving the parking lot. She has questioned why Lawson failed to see any of that, but thought her driving away was suspicious.
Both incidents came as police tactics and use of force nationally, particularly in minority communities, have come under scrutiny. Since her encounter Cupid has established a citizen review panel for resident complaints against police.
Baker said the incident has stuck with him, and he doesn’t want to return to Cobb County.
“I’ve thought about it every day since it happened,” he said.
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