Kentucky: Police Allegedly Force Muslim Woman to Remove Hijab after Detention
A Muslim woman has alleged she was forced to take off her hijab after being arrested by a University of Kentucky police officer and taken to the Fayette County Detention Center. Now a national civil rights organization is calling for an investigation.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a news release Friday that the woman said she was stopped Monday night for driving without headlights on and was arrested “because of an issue related to a late registration from a couple years ago.” But she told the organization no one told her she was being arrested, and she doesn’t remember being read her rights. The woman was not named in CAIR’s news release.
The organization said she told them she was “asked several times what her religion is” during the incident and was “handcuffed and held for hours and forced to take her hijab off for the booking photo.”
CAIR says the woman told them that while handcuffed and “in a public hall where everyone could see me,” she was asked to remove her headscarf. She said she refused and asked to be taken to a private area.
“I was then brought to another room which had a window door and put on a toilet were there was a half wall which would still not cover my head,” said a statement from the woman, released by CAIR. “I was forced to sit bent over for a long time which I couldn’t hold very long. Then I used my dress as a headscarf to be able to sit straight and without back pain. … I truly feel terrorized, terrified and abused by those officers.”
“Ultimately, she was released on $100 bond, which she says was taken out of her purse,” the news release stated.
CAIR said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, its national deputy director, sent a letter to Col. Scott Colvin, executive director of the Fayette County Detention Center, and UK police Chief Joseph Monroe asking that they investigate the incident “and establish clear policies permitting people of faith to keep their hijabs and other religiously required hair coverings on while in detention.”
Colvin said in a statement he had not gotten a letter from CAIR, but he said he “will certainly commit to a transparent review of the incident once the allegations are made known to me.”
“If that review indicates that a policy or practice revision is needed, it will be made, and staff trained,” Colvin said in the statement. “Members of this division are professionally committed to the preservation and protection of an individual’s rights and their dignity when placed in our custody.”
The University of Kentucky said in a statement that a review of the body camera footage showed the UK police officer did not ask the woman to remove her hijab or take it from her after stopping her for a possible traffic violation.
UK said the officer ran the woman’s license and registration and discovered that she had an outstanding bench warrant because of an unpaid fine from 2021 and then arrested her and took her to the jail “as required under the law.”
CAIR said in the news release that the charges against the woman, described as “an immigrant physician of Iraqi heritage,” were dismissed Thursday.
Roula Allouch, who is the former national board chair for CAIR and an attorney representing the woman, said the woman’s “discomfort with being identified reflects how traumatized she was by the situation.”
Though Allouch now lives in Cincinnati, she graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Law and has family in Lexington.
“I know our community is better than this,” she said. “I was really disappointed to hear of this happening in my hometown.”
Allouch said “each of us needs to be concerned” whenever anyone’s rights are infringed upon.
“We live in a society were there are people whose rights are affected every day,” she said. “We need to hold our government representatives accountable to ensure that they are following the law.”
Source: kentucky.com
