Posted on June 27, 2017

Police Chief Who ‘Called Former Miss Black Texas a Black B****’ When He Arrested Her Resigns

Luke Barnes, Daily Mail, June 27, 2017

Carmen Ponder

Carmen Ponder

The north Texas police chief accused of the racially-motivated arrest of Miss Black Texas 2016 has resigned from his position.

Kerry Crews, previously of the Commerce Police Department, resigned from his position on Monday night, as an independent law firm released its findings into the case.

In statement read to Commerce City Hall, Crews said the stress and burden of his job as police chief had made him decide to resign.

The controversy that had surrounded the arrest of Carmen Ponder had also been a factor in his resignation, Fox 4 reported.

He said: ‘It was my understanding that officers had been called, but I felt that it was something I could handle. I was wrong.

‘As a result of being off-duty, I was unprepared for the response I received from Ms. Ponder, and I became emotional.

‘I do not feel that I can continue to bear the weight of the police chief position.’

Crews will now take on a new role as an assistant to the city manager, a newly-created position.

Ms. Ponder claimed she was harassed in May by the North Texas police chief who called her a ‘black b****,’ before being unlawfully detained and arrested.

Ponder, 23, sued the police force and said she wanted police accountability and formal charges to be filed against Commerce Police Chief Kerry Crews.

An investigation commissioned by an East Texas city found no wrongdoing in the arrest of Miss Black Texas 2016.

But Ponder’s attorney denounced the conclusion on social media, saying she should not have been arrested in the first place.

Ponder’s lawyer, Lee Merritt, wrote: ‘Chief Crews directed the unlawful arrest of [Ponder] under unjustifiable circumstances.

In her account, Ponder said she was driving to Walmart on May 20 when a black pickup truck cut in front of her and began driving erratically.

She said the car was braking and accelerating dangerously, and she worried it was a drunk driver.

Ponder wrote that she put her blinker on, pulled around to pass the truck and drove into the superstore parking lot.

According to Ponder, the black truck followed her into the lot and pulled up next to where she’d parked her car.

She said the passenger, who she later identified as Crews, got out of the truck and started yelling and screaming that he was teaching his 14-year-old daughter how to drive, saying Ponder shouldn’t have passed his truck.

Ponder wrote that she ignored the man at first, but eventually turned to tell him ‘it’s illegal’ about a 14-year-old driving, before walking into the store.

‘That’s when he screamed ‘oh whatever, you black b****.”

She said when she walked out she saw Crews there and was quickly charged by several other officers in street clothes.

She explained: ‘One guy showed me his police badge and started screaming at me. He told me this guy was his chief and I better apologize to him now. I told him I was going to do that and was walking to my car.

‘I began walking to the policeman when the aggressive guy pulled me by my arm again, told the cop that I was resisting arrest and demanded he arrest me.’

Ponder was then handcuffed and booked into jail, where she spent 24 hours. She was charged with evading arrest.

Ponder called attention to the incident to hold the officer accountable, and has started a crowdfunding page to raise money for her attorney’s fees.

She wrote on a youcaring.com page that she will not take a plea deal and is ‘more than willing’ to take the case to trial.

‘My only crime…the color of my skin,’ she wrote.