‘It’s Still Driving!’: Black Kentucky Woman Forcefully Yanked Out of Car After Mistakenly Driving Through Unsecured Crime Scene, Causing the Car to Roll Away with Passengers Still Inside
Kearie Watts, a 23-year-old Black woman from Kentucky, had just left her grandmother’s house with friends after celebrating Mother’s Day when she was yanked out of her car by an aggressive and irate police officer who accused her of driving through an active crime scene.
However, she said she had no idea she had driven through an active crime scene because the Louisville Metro police officers had yet to put up yellow crime tape to secure the perimeter, which is the usual police protocol.
It was only after the cop yanked her out that officers began putting up yellow tape to keep citizens from entering the crime scene.
“I never would have pulled onto the street because it’s common sense that you don’t do that if there was yellow crime scene tape,” Watts told the Louisville Courier Journal.
“When the police officer approached me, he didn’t ask me to leave; he told me to get off his crime scene, and I was interfering.”
“As we’re exchanging words, there are still police pulling up, so at this point, I can’t even back out. As we’re talking, another police officer was now putting yellow tape out.”
The cop did not even give her a chance to place the car in park, leaving it in drive, allowing the car to roll away with her friends still inside.
“The car is still driving!” her friend, Veah Kinslow, yelled from the passenger seat while recording. It appears to have come to a stop within a few seconds.
“I told you all to get out of the crime scene!” the cop yelled.
“She was trying to,” one of her friends responded from inside the car.
“No, she was not trying to,” the cop responded.
Watts was not taken to jail but ended up with an injured leg and a damaged door because it struck an object as it continued rolling after she had been yanked out.
She said she had to pay $200 to fix the door because it was not closing properly. She also visited the hospital to treat her left leg which was sore and scraped from the incident.
“My car was still in drive when he pulled me out,” she told the Courier Journal. “I guess my door hit something while it was in drive, and it wouldn’t shut. I had to bungee cord it to the seat.”
According to the departmental policy from the Louisville Metro Police Department, it is the responsibility of police to secure the crime scene to keep people out instead of allowing them in, then using violence against them.
The initial responding officer will have the responsibility of establishing and defining the boundaries of the crime scene. The officer will erect physical barriers (e.g., barricades, cones, tape) to define the boundaries.
Boundaries should include the area in which the actual crime occurred, potential points and paths of entry and exit, and locations where evidence or involved individuals may have been moved.
Additionally, officers should establish a control perimeter. The control perimeter is a buffer zone established to protect the primary crime scene from contamination. The control perimeter should be large enough to incorporate the possibility of additional crime scenes while maintaining the integrity of the primary scene.
Watts just happened to drive through the scene before the cops were able to do any of that, and ended up abused as a result.
‘It was Traumatizing’
The incident took place around 3:15 a.m. on May 12, a few blocks from her grandmother’s house in the Parkland neighborhood of Louisville.
She said she was taking the usual route to return home to her children after visiting her grandmother when she pulled onto the block with several cop cars who were responding to a double-shooting where a man and woman were found with gunshot wounds but survived.
But she knew none of that when she was stopped by police, who accused her of interfering with their investigation. She said she was unable to back up because more cop cars pulled up behind her.
She said the cop ordered her to drive through a dark alley, but she was reluctant to do so because she was scared, especially since it was so dark and late.
The video recorded by Kinslow begins with Watts sitting in the driver’s seat while the cop has the door open. The cop then reaches into the car, grabs Watts by the shirt, and pulls her out onto the ground.
“Don’t touch her like that!” someone from inside the car yelled as the car continues driving without anybody in the driver’s seat.
“Get in the car and get out of my scene now!” the cop yelled.
Another cop then justifies the aggressive nature of his fellow officers.
“She wasn’t leaving, she wasn’t listening, she’s impeding our crime scene, she’s obstructing government operations,” he said.
“Are you serious?” her friend responded. “The car was still moving when he pulled her out.”
The incident has drawn criticism from Joseph Gerth, a longtime columnist at the Courier Journal, pointing out that aggressive behavior is the norm for the Louisville Metro Police Department, the same agency that killed Breonna Taylor in 2020 during a botched raid and allowed a police dog to maul a 14-year-old Black boy who was lying facedown on the ground.
Gerth’s criticisms were directed at Louisville Metro Police Chief Paul Humphrey, who placed the blame for the incident on Watts instead of the officer by claiming officers did not have the time to deal with her because of the investigation.
But that does not make sense to Gerth, who asked in his column, “Can we really trust Louisville police given their history?”
He continued his questioning about the police conduct in his May 19 opinion piece:
The thing is, what do you think took more time and attention away from investigating the shooting?
Grabbing the woman, jerking her from her car, tossing her to the ground, handcuffing her, and dealing with her upset friend who was in the car with her, before finally releasing her and sending on her way?
Or simply dealing politely with her — or even less than politely with her — until she moved her car, allowing police to go about their business?
But beyond that, shouldn’t we be asking why a police officer even touched Watts to begin with if nothing she did warranted arrest.
Watts said she has already retained an attorney and plans to file a lawsuit.
“I don’t want nobody else to have to go through that again,” she told the Courier Journal. “… I don’t think he should be part of LMPD because he’s not serving and protecting anybody, and that’s what he’s here for.”
“I want him fired. I am suing; my lawyer is already working on that. It was traumatizing.”
“He violated me,” she told WHAS11. “This was not a traffic stop, I was not involved in the crime that took place. I was simply just a regular citizen driving past, trying to get home to my kids.”