‘Do you wanna go to jail for no reason?’: Atlanta woman says she was threatened with arrest by officers while trying to make a turn

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A woman in Atlanta says she was threatened with jail time by police officers while trying to turn onto the street where she lives. She recorded the exchange and posted it to Instagram, where it has since drawn a wave of reactions from viewers. In the video, the woman can be seen speaking to multiple officers, telling them she lives in a nearby building and was only trying to reach it. She says she was sent back and forth between different officers, with each one reportedly giving her different instructions.  “Come with me to get arrested because at this point I’m going to be,” she says near the start of the clip. She adds that she had been through a similar situation in the same area the day before. Woman says she was redirected between officers before being threatened with arrest According to the video, the woman approached one officer first, telling him she lives in a nearby building and could not find a legal way to turn onto her street. “I live right here, so where– there’s no turn up there, it’s a one-way,” she says in the clip. The officer asks her, “You want to go to jail for no reason?” The woman responds that another officer had already told her something different, saying, “No, they told me— they told— they— the other officer told me—” The video also shows the same officer reaching his hand into her car in an apparent attempt to open the door from the inside. The car did not open, which the woman says was due to a safety feature built into Mercedes-Benz vehicles that prevents doors from being opened that way. It is one of several recent videos showing the public confused by unusual police behavior during otherwise routine encounters. @searendipity_fan watch me get yelled at by some really cool police offers .k thanks ♬ âm thanh gốc – searendipity_fan – searendipity_fan The woman then drives to a second officer and repeats her explanation. “They sent me here because I live in this building right here,” she tells him. She says she had been told the day before that she was not allowed to turn at that location either. “I don’t like to be threatened that I’m going to jail when there are no signs,” she says. Toward the end of the video, the woman asks both officers for their names and badge numbers. One officer identifies himself as “Sergeant Purcell.” The first officer says he does not know the sergeant’s name. The woman is then told to proceed, and the video shows her driving forward and parking, according to on-screen text in the clip. The post drew a large number of comments from viewers, many of which criticized how the officers handled the interaction. “I got anxiety watching that interaction,” one commenter wrote. Some commenters said the woman remained calm throughout the exchange.  One commenter argued that all police officers should be required to undergo training in conflict resolution and mediation, writing that the woman “trying to communicate with them and they simply won’t shut up and listen” reflected a larger problem.  Other commenters appear to speculate that the officers may have been trying to escalate the situation, and credited the woman for not responding in kind. Other viral cases have shown officers making claims that later turned out to be based on a case that never existed, fueling similar public scrutiny of police conduct.