Honestie Hodges says she used to dream of being a police officer, but not anymore.
On Monday, the 11-year-old walked out the back door of her mother’s house in Michigan and officers from the Grand Rapids Police Department confronted her and two other adults, who were also leaving the house, police wrote on Facebook.
Authorities handcuffed Hodges before patting her down and placing her in the back of a cop car for around ten minutes, according to WZMM13. Police, who were looking for Carrie Manning, Hodges’ aunt who is white and accused of attempted murder, also detained the two women, who were both black.
Cathy Williams, a spokeswoman for the police department, told MichiganLive that officers thought the two adults with Honestie Hodges were white because of the light that evening.
Honestie’s mom, Whitney Hodges, told WILX that Hodges was also asked to walk backward with her hands in the air before she was handcuffed and searched.
As it happened, the 11-year-old said she screamed out for her mom to help.
“When my mom was walking past I was putting my hands through the little bars, banging on the windows screaming, ‘Please don't let them take me,’” she told WNEM.
But her mother said she could do nothing but watch helplessly.
“The whole time they are telling her to come down, I'm telling them she's 11 years old, that's my daughter,” she told WILX. “Don't cuff her.”
The police department wrote on Facebook that its officers detained the three women because they wanted to make sure they weren’t Manning — who was arrested in a house not far away from the Hodges’ home — or armed with a dangerous weapon.
After it was confirmed none of the three was Manning or had any weapons, police said they released Hodges and the two adults.
An internal investigation into the incident has been opened by the police department after a complaint was filed on behalf of Hodges, who told WNEM that she’s now “afraid to open or go near my back door.”
The 11-year-old said the incident has impacted her in other ways, too.
“I wanted to be a detective, no, a police officer,” she said, according to WILX, “but now I don't want anything to do with those kind of things.”
