Apparently A Grandma Can't Sit In Her Car Reading A Bible In Mississippi Without Getting Tased 8 Times

Vivian Burks was brutalized by cops who thought they smelled marijuana.

Image: Tequask, Wikimedia Commons

On July 23, 65-year-old Vivian Burks of Leake County, Mississippi, was in a park, sitting in her car, reading her Bible, working on a sermon and bothering no one. Unfortunately, this relatively wholesome activity led to her being brutally beaten and tased — eight times — by two police officers.

It all started because one officer who probably should have had better things to do came up to her car to tell her that she had expired tags.

“I gave him my license and registration like he asked, and he even offered to put the tag on for me,” Burks told reporters.

That should have been it … but it was not! Apparently, either that officer or an investigator accompanying him “smelled marijuana” and wanted to search her car. It’s not clear if he told Burks that this is why he wanted to search her car, but he said he was going to and she told him he would need a warrant.

The police officers disagreed!

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A press release from the Carlos Moore Group, a civil rights law firm representing Burks, stated:

According to the victim, she was parked at Lincoln Park reading the Bible and writing a sermon when a Carthage Police officer approached her from behind and informed her that her vehicle tag was out of date. She provided her license and registration as requested, and the officer offered to put the tag on her vehicle. The officer then asked if she was Donnell Burks mother. Shortly after, another officer arrived in a black vehicle, whom she believed to be an investigator. She overheard the second officer telling the first officer that she was Joshua Brown’s grandmother.

As she proceeded to her vehicle, the officer instructed her to step away and then grabbed her. She informed the officers that they couldn’t search her vehicle without a warrant. At that moment, they began to assault her. During the incident, she was tased eight times, thrown to the ground, and sustained multiple injuries to her back, head, elbows, stomach, and legs. She told the officers she was hurt and didn’t feel well, and she requested medical assistance.

When the EMTs arrived, she requested to go to the hospital, but they advised that she was fine and instructed the officer to take her to be booked. She was thrown into the back of the car and transported to the Police Department. At the jail, she explained to the staff that she was diabetic and requested water. She was seen by medical staff at the jail, and the nurse advised that she needed to be taken to the hospital.

Her counsel says that she was charged with disorderly conduct - failure to comply, resisting arrest, a DUI, and marijuana possession. Though it seems as though this all had a lot more to do with whoever her grandchildren are.

According to the police, they were basically forced to beat up and tase a Bible-reading grandma because they smelled marijuana.

“The officer smelled marijuana, turned around, saw the suspect car also had an expired tag, and executed a traffic stop,” Carthage Police Chief Billy McMillan told McClatchy News. “After the stop the officer continued to smell the aroma of marijuana from the car.”

The officers tased her a total of eight times. Eight times! Because they smelled marijuana and because she asked them to get a warrant.

Now, granted, Mississippi is one of the few states left where a whiff of marijuana is still probable cause to search a vehicle, but regardless of where you are, it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing anyone really needs to tase a grandma over. Burks admitted to having smoked earlier in the day, but not while she was driving — and the fact is, they cannot prove that she had smoked recently enough for it to have affected her driving one way or another.

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We live in the future. There is really no need for an officer to engage with anyone over an expired tag when they can just have a notice sent to the person’s home. Indeed, most traffic infractions of that kind do not require officer interference — which we know frequently leads to police brutality.

No one was harmed by Vivian Burks reading her Bible in a car with an expired tag. No one, frankly, was harmed by her car smelling like marijuana. She, however, was beaten within an inch of her life over these small infractions. So what’s the real threat to public safety here? I’m going to say it’s “unnecessary traffic stops.”

Earlier this year, Chicago police swarmed Dexter Reed’s car in order to pull him over because he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt (though since they have been questioned on how they could see he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt because of his tinted windows, they now say they pulled him over because of the tinted windows). They demanded he roll his window down and tell them what he was doing. He did, and then he rolled it back up again (safety experts have long told women to keep the windows in their cars rolled up as high as possible when interacting with people saying they are police officers, because of situations in which killers have pretended to be police officers). They told him to roll it back down and then demanded he open his door. Reed, who had severe PTSD and other issues as a result of having been shot in 2022, took a gun out and shot at the officers, and they returned fire with 96 rounds.

This was a tragedy that would not have happened without a stupid and unnecessary traffic stop. I love seatbelts! I had to read Unsafe at Any Speed in eighth grade because I told my mom I wanted to live in a VW bus and be a folk singer, and it was very interesting! But I also do not think people should be pulled over for something like that and forced to interact with police unless they are an immediate threat to people’s lives.

Vivian Burks was not an immediate threat to someone’s life. The police, however, were absolutely a threat to hers. If we care about public safety, we’ve got to find a better way.