Unwanted Advance

I learned to hate the pigs when I was a 16 year old girl.

I was a high school student at Bellevue West. A Bellevue Police Department officer pulled me over one day on my way back home at about 36th and Cornhusker for speeding. I was speeding because I was late for dinner, I stayed after school for practice that day. I had a big concert coming up. When I rolled my window down he asked me if I knew how fast I was going, and also for my license and registration. He walked back to his car for a bit and looked up my information.

He came back and asked me if I could afford to pay for the ticket, I said no. Then he joked that if I gave him my number we could “work something out.” I felt gross and was really afraid- I was always afraid when grown men hit on me but to have a police officer do it introduced an entirely new power imbalance and fear. I told him that I don’t give my number to strangers. He kept pushing a little bit and making jokes like it would be fine and he was a good guy. I said “I can’t.” He looked annoyed with me, like he had just gotten rejected, and became really mean and impatient with me, raising his voice as he filled out my ticket and gave me instructions. I held back tears and just tried to stay calm because I was afraid what he would do if I even showed the slightest sign of being upset. I had a panic attack the rest of my way home. When I got home I showed my mom the speeding ticket and told her what happened. We placed a call to BPD to report but never were called back.

What gets me the most is he started hitting on me after he had seen my license and I’m assuming my age. Even to a grown woman that wouldn’t be acceptable. A few years later, after I graduated, our School Resource Officer- also BPD- was accused of having some sort of relationship with a girl in my grade while we were in school right around the time this would have happened to me from another BPD officer. When you look up the SRO’s name you can’t find any info anymore on the accusations or why he left the high school. He was always too friendly- he added us on facebook and people said it was so he could keep “tabs” on us. Now I wonder if it was so he could keep tabs on the underage girls.

It seems like a cover up by BPD to me, because we were all talking about it one year on Facebook and nowadays you can’t find any info on it. Then our Philosophy and Band teacher also got the boot for the same accusations from girls my age and you can find THAT online. All this happened within the course of the same 4 years (my high school didn’t know how to hire people apparently). Yet, nothing on the SRO despite him being accused of the same stuff. Bellevue Pig Department is part of the sexual harassment and abuse of girls in Bellevue and likely other cities too, they don’t protect us.