Yes, Donnetta Foster admits she was asked to leave the Decatur library last October after her toddler laughed too loudly at flash cards.
Yes, she said she became boisterous herself when a DeKalb County police officer arrived and ordered her to leave the library’s grounds.
And yes, Foster acknowledges some of her choice words included profanity.
But at a news conference Friday, the 20-year-old single mother and college student insisted her actions nearly a year ago didn’t rise to the level of criminal activity and a charge of disorderly conduct.
Foster now faces a Sept. 13 jury in DeKalb County State Court and could get up to a year in jail if convicted. She decided not to plead no-contest and will fight the charge.
Foster said she’s been back and forth to court maybe 9 or 10 times since the incident. The last court appearance was in June, when a judge denied her request to have the charges dropped and ordered the jury trial.
She said she is “terrified” at the possibility of being locked up again. “I’ve spent two days in jail over this already,” Foster said at her attorney’s Decatur office.
But she said wants a jury hear her side of what happened at the library on Sycamore Street last fall, when she said Decatur police refused to hear her out. She hopes jurors will feel her frustration at the treatment she said she received at the hands of library staff and police.
Foster said she was at the library to use a computer to prepare for a job interview the following day. She said she had used the library before, but this was the first time she had taken her son, Savon, who is now 2.
Foster and Savon had only been there for 15 minutes before the incident over her laughing child began.
She said she quieted Savon but a security officer came over and asked her to leave. She appealed to a library staffer, but she said the staffer shut her computer down and asked the security guard to escort her out.
According to the Decatur police report, officers were called to the library because Foster refused to leave the property. Officers arrived and escorted her out of the building.
Foster was issued a criminal trespass warning and “became irate yelling in a loud and boisterous manner,” the report said. Foster was asked several times “to calm down and walk away” and told not to return. The report says Foster left but returned “within minutes … yelling and cursing.”
When police asked her to leave again, the report said, Foster moved away from the library but continued “yelling in a loud and boisterous manner.” It was at that time that police placed her under arrest on a disorderly conduct charge and handcuffed her, the report said.
Foster on Friday denied that she yelled at police and used profanity repeatedly, but did admit to some cursing -- away from the library. She said she was frustrated the officer would not let her explain what happened. She said she even called for a police supervisor to intervene.
Her attorney, Mawuli Mel Davis, will argue library staff and the police overreacted in dealing with a single mother trying to make a future for herself and her son, whose maternal grandmother eventually arrived at the scene.
“She was loud. She was upset. She was emotional,” Davis said Friday of his client. “But it did not warrant her being arrested.”
The attorney also questioned why six or seven police cars had to respond. “It just seems [like] a little overkill,” Davis said.
Davis acknowledged that his client is taking a risk in fighting the charge and not accepting a plea agreement.
“We all understand that it’s a risk,” Davis said. “But we also understand that anytime anyone has stood up for anything in our community and our society that has meant anything, it has been at a risk. She’s decided that it is a risk that she’s willing to take.”
Foster, who grew up in Lithonia and once spent time in foster care before getting out on her own, said the case is coming at the wrong time in her life.
“This could change everything for me, my son, our future,” said Foster, a full-time student at Georgia Perimeter College. “I’m really trying elevate things in me and my son’s life and get us to a place where we can be secure as far as financially and stable in our home life.”
She said she’s missed classes because of pretrial proceedings and anticipates missing more of them during a trial.
“I’m terrified,” she said. “It’s been a lot weighing on me.”
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