Follow Up Letter:
It’s a black and white issue
My name is Misty Williams and I wrote the letter about the hard time my family and I are having in this all-white neighborhood even though my husband is an injured soldier. Thank you for putting my letter out!
Last week after dinner we decided to go for a walk. The kids got on their bikes, I walked the dogs and my husband was helped on his 4-wheeler that was made just for him to accommodate his injury.
It is a small 4-wheeler with all the hand gears on the right side so that he can operate it. He has no movement in his left hand at all! We got about two- blocks away and saw a Marksville police officer. I told my girls to move to the side so he could pass.
Well he started yelling for my husband to get over to him. He asked my husband if he was from “across the Bayou.” My husband told him that he lived down the street. Our family walk then went bad.
He started talking to my husband like he was a dog. He demanded for my husband to get off the 4-wheeler “now!” I told him it would take a second to help him off as he was injured in Iraq and cannot move fast.
The officer then said “so!” I was scared he would think my husband was refusing and hurt him. I was very angry at this man! He and I had some words.
He towed our 4-wheeler and then gave us a ticket. The ticket was $136.50, and the tow was $40. He left my husband standing in the middle of the road with no cane. He had another officer come who was black but his car was full.
The officer who did all this then said he would give my husband a ride. I then said “no I don’t know what you would do to him once you get him in your car.”
I told him how everyone around there rode 4-wheelers, go carts and golf carts daily. That’s why we thought it was OK, and that’s the only way for my husband to go on walks with the family. We saw everyone else do it, that’s why we got one.
I told him he only did all this because my husband is black. He said “Oh, here we go.”
But I know it’s true in my heart. If I break the law, I will pay. I don’t want to get away with a crime. But please don’t talk to my husband like he is trash and assume he came from “across the bayou.”
We parked our small 4-wheeler that was going slower than a turtle. Drive through my area you will see them flying down my road . And golf carts, well, they are driven more than cars on my road.
And to all the neighbors that stood in your yard watching us with the cop that day, pointing, sticking up your nose and looking at us like we were trash — we were only taking a family walk and doing what you do daily.
We were just doing it wearing the wrong color skin, I guess.
CenLamar 
where in the hell is the damn pentagon people and the feds at putting a stop to this crap?
It’s pretty amazing that this cop felt compelled to make a disabled veteran get off of his four-wheeler during a family walk.
Every single day, kids drive golf carts, go carts, and four wheelers through my mother’s neighborhood, and no one is ever reprimanded (despite the fact that a few cops live on her street).
Selective law enforcement is what this story is about.
yeah and how retarded towing a 4 wheeler.
This is one for the Feds. A mixed race family in Avoyelles can forget about help from the local law.
I’ve written a letter to Michele Godard about this and she said she’d look into it. Let’s hope they do a hidden camera expose’ on this department and bring national attention to it.
Don’t the police cars in Marksville have video cameras? Let this one go to court and let the evidence come out, if in fact there is a recording of the ticketing.
These incidents can be reported to the state department of justice and the FBI. There also is a state human relations commission.
Business as usual…As someone who graduated from Marksville High(1993), I can say that I was the subject of much ridicule over a decade ago. I attended MHS the first year of the “consolidation” (read: desegregation)of the Avoyelles Parish School Board facilities, and I can tell you from first hand experience, I was treated as an outcast by white peers because I was not prejudiced, and had many friends of color at my new school. I was unaware that I would be treated as a “N___ Lover”, or a “Mudshark” and had truly never even heard the terms in my own home. As a side note, I never dated a person of color there for fear of the retribution that I or my potential beau may have received. I have relatives of all shades, and some that would surprise the average person if they heard us say we were blood relatives. Then again, I am originally from south of I-10, where desegregation took place at NISH in or around 1969, while my mother attended high school there. Guess it just goes to show that even though you may have cable tv, you aren’t necessarily up to date with the rest of the world.