Greenwood’s Jelani Barr, a candidate for lieutenant governor of Mississippi, was arrested following a traffic stop Monday by the Mississippi Highway Patrol.
Barr was charged with speeding (70 in a 55 mph zone), disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and disobeying a law enforcement officer, according to Trooper Tony Dunn, public affairs officer with Troop D in Greenwood. The arrest was made in Holmes County.
Dunn said a trooper was doing a routine patrol on Mississippi 12, heading east toward Lexington, when he spotted Barr driving west toward Tchula, Dunn said.
“The trooper turned around and caught up with the vehicle outside Tchula,” Dunn said.
Once pulled over, Barr refused to roll down his window, the trooper said. He also refused to exit the vehicle.
Barr was traveling with his girlfriend, Dr. Adrienne Hicks, according to a story published this morning on the website of The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson.
Barr’s non-compliance with the officer’s lawful orders only compounded the stop’s dynamics, Dunn said.
It’s important to get violators out of their vehicle simply because “we don’t know what’s going on inside,” he said.
Earlier this week, Dunn said, officers from the Crenshaw Police Department stopped a violator, and the driver refused to come out of the vehicle. Once he did, he fired at the officers in an attempt to elude capture. That suspect didn’t wound the officers, but he could have, Dunn said. It was only later that he was apprehended by a combined effort of officers from several law-enforcement agencies.
Traffic stops can be extremely dangerous for officers, especially if the driver and occupants don’t comply with an officer’s lawful order, Dunn said.
Barr, a Democratic candidate hoping to challenge in-cumbent Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, declined to comment when contacted by the Commonwealth this morning.
“I’ll have a Facebook posting about noon. That will tell my views on what happened,” he said.
Barr told the Jackson newspaper, however, that he declined to get out of the car because the trooper didn’t tell him why he was pulled over.
“They didn’t give me probable cause and told me to step out again,” he said. “I was like, ‘No sir, I do not feel safe.”
He also said that the trooper did not read him his Miranda rights. Dunn said, however, that a Miranda warning doesn’t follow an arrest like on TV. Rather, Miranda rights must be given only if the suspect is going to be questioned.
“In a traffic stop, we don’t have to read them their rights,” he said.
Contact Bob Darden at 581-7239 or bdarden@gwcommonwealth.com.
