A racial justice advocate who compiled damning data on her local police ticketing people of color—before being pulled over herself in what became a deeply ironic and viral TikTok video—says she’s not backing down in the face of what she believes is a campaign of intimidation.
In the clip, posted Sunday, the woman is pulled over by a cop who she alleged specifically preyed on Black and brown folks. Charlotte Carter then reads the cop to filth for the alleged racial discrimination.
“Mr. Scott, you pull over 80 percent Black people. I went through all of your tickets for six months…only 20 percent of the population of Chesterfield [County] is Black,” Carter tells the officer standing next to her window. “I don’t know how you managed to ticket 80 percent minorities.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Carter laughs as she fills out her information after receiving a ticket, accusing him of being “gung-ho” in his alleged commitment to targeting people of color.
“The last six months, you had ticketed—from when I did this about a month or two ago—you had ticketed 250 people in Chesterfield that had gone to Chesterfield court,” she says in the clip, adding that she compared Scott to another officer who had allegedly only ticketed 240 people in an entire year.
“But you, I only had to go back six months. You sure do write a lot of tickets,” Carter laughs as she hands back the signed ticket to the officer.
@vapersianprincess Racist cops retaliating #stalker #obsessed #racist #racistcops #chesterfieldva #statepolice #retaliation ♬ original sound - Cha Cha
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Carter said that the officer followed her for two to three miles before stopping her for allegedly illegally turning right on red.
Carter, who is Iranian American, claimed police in Virginia first turned their attention to her in the spring of 2022 after she started questioning an alleged child abuse case that involved her son’s biracial friend. She said she noticed the child was bruised and severely underweight so, as a nurse, she was obligated to report the situation. But she believes the local police were slow to act and didn’t take the child’s welfare seriously because his father was Black, so she kept following up on the case.
While police eventually arrested someone in the matter, Carter said she felt they didn’t take it seriously until she posted a TikTok about the alleged abuse in March. The video has received nearly 5 million views.
@vapersianprincess #childabuse #domesticassault #savethechildren #parentalabuse #CPS #cpscorruption #chesterfieldPD #worthlesscops #badcops ♬ original sound - Cha Cha
After that, Carter said the Chesterfield police suddenly began popping up everywhere in her life.
“I ended up trying to file for emergency custody, but the police began falsely arresting me,” she said.
In April, police arrested her for trespassing on her own property.
“They also added on three additional charges for contributing to the delinquency of a minor for each one of my three children because I encouraged them to trespass into our home,” she said.
@vapersianprincess #falsearrestagain #chesterfieldcountypolice #firstamendmentrights #lawsuit #civilrightsviolations #policecorruption #retaliation ♬ original sound - Cha Cha
The episode prompted Carter to start researching policing practices of Chesterfield, or “Arrestifield” as some social media users call it.
Carter provided documents to The Daily Beast that she compiled using the publicly accessible Chesterfield District Court website, which showed the arrest demographics of Scott, the officer she encountered in the TikTok video. According to that data, which she also included in a TikTok video, the officer had stopped 53 drivers in six months, largely in October. The district court website displays the race of each traffic or criminal court defendant. Most of the drivers—30—were Black, and 13 were white. The race of 10 were unclear but their last names appeared either Hispanic or Arabic. Carter said she looked into Scott and another officer at random just to see the racial makeup of recorded stops within the area.
In October, 8News Richmond reported that most drivers pulled over in Virginia are Black or Latino, who are overrepresented.
According to the Chesterfield County 2020 census, 67 percent of the town’s population is white, 25 percent is Black, and 10 percent identified as Latino.
@vapersianprincess VAcourts.gov feel free to check for yourselves! #racistcops #racist #dobetter #accountability #statepolice #chesterfieldva #whitepoliceofficer ♬ original sound - Cha Cha
Since she began repeatedly criticizing the police on her TikTok, Carter told The Daily Beast she has been stopped by the police about 10 times—with the most recent being the incredibly fortuitous stop she filmed involving Officer Scott. (Chesterfield General District Court records show Carter has been apprehended on five occasions, but she received multiple charges on those dates. The records confirm Carter was charged with contributing “to the delinquency” of three minors on the same day she was charged for trespassing on April 28.) She has since created a GoFundMe page to help finance legal costs.
While she said getting pulled over on Sunday could have been a coincidence after all her anti-racism work, she could hardly believe it when she looked at the officer’s badge.
“As I was going to sign the ticket, I saw his name was S. Scott,” Carter said. “And when I saw S. Scott on that paper, I just turned my camera on record.”
Her theory of being on the police’s radar was only solidified to her when she was the subject of a less-than-subtle Facebook post by Chesterfield County Police Chief Jeffrey Katz in April.
“A number of people have messaged me to share a series of TikTok videos created by a member of our community who really seems to enjoy the attention she’s getting by claiming our department is indifferent to a child abuse allegation,” Katz wrote. “Ultimately, at the conclusion of our investigation, we made an arrest in this case.”
“I don’t want to give this person additional notoriety,” he continued, “but I won’t stand by passively while someone sits behind a keyboard and attempts to disparage the work our people do to keep the children in our community safe.”
The Chesterfield County Police Department did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request Thursday for comment on Carter’s arrests, or her allegations of racial profiling by officers.
When 8News reported on the issue in October, Katz, who is also the president of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police, claimed racial profiling was “not a factor” in the department’s traffic stops. Rather than addressing the statistics, he said, “There is a great disproportionality of Black and Hispanic drivers who die behind the wheel in Virginia.”
Before moving to Chesterfield, Katz was the chief of police in Boynton Beach, Florida. In 2017, four Boynton Beach officers were federally charged for beating an unarmed Black man, The Miami Times reported, spurring allegations of racism within the force that led local leaders to call for Katz’ termination.
Despite her arrests racking up, Carter said it was “empowering” to call the cops out for their behavior and she’s not going to stop.
“The wheels of justice are very, very slow, and it takes patience and persistence and not giving up,” Carter told The Daily Beast. “I stand for what I believe in at all costs. I’m willing to die on this hill.”
