UCF Police faces allegations

Drug user. Crack head. Liar.

Those are just some of the words that Dr. Jennifer Lisa Vest, a philosophy professor at UCF, alleges that four white UCF police officers called her when they pulled her over on Aug. 9.

When contacted on Aug. 28, UCF's Public Information Officer Sergeant Troy Williamson said the police department is not permitted to comment, nor is the police report being released as there is an internal investigation going on.

In addition to the internal investigation, the NAACP and the ACLU are also reviewing the alleged racial profiling incident.

"Today I filed a grievance through the [university's Faculty Union] against the University for discrimination (on the basis of race, gender, sexuality and disability)," wrote Vest in an e-mail to her colleagues and students.

According to the traffic citation that was issued to Vest, 316.221 taillamps, she was pulled over for a broken taillight.

Vest also wrote that after she filed a complaint against the police that they continued to harass her by calling her house incessantly until Assistant Provost Michael Johnson got them to stop.

According to a letter from UCF's Chief of Police Richard Beary written to Chief Val Demings of the OrlandoPolice Department, Vest filed a complaint alleging that she was "improperly stopped, unlawfully searched and subjected to abusive language and unprofessional behavior by members of the University of Central Florida Police Department."

Beary asked that the Orlando PD's Office of Professional Standards conduct the investigation "due to the seriousness of the allegations and to ensure impartiality."

Vest, who said she notified police of her heart condition early on, claims they didn't allow her to use her nitrospray when she began experiencing chest pains.

Also in the e-mail, Vest requests that "these officers be disciplined, that they issue a public apology to me, that the citation they gave me for a bad taillight (without ever issuing a warning first) be removed from my record and that some re-training of these officers take place on the topics of: professionalism, civil rights, and liberties, and disability/medical, race and gender issues."

As news of the incident continues to sweep through campus and the Central Florida community, students and other members of the UCF community are speaking out about the alleged injustice.

Senior philosophy major Nicole Gumbs heard about the incident about a week and a half before school started and said she took the incident very personally because she was supposed to study under Vest this semester.

"At first, I was outraged for personal reasons because I feel as though Dr. Vest is a surrogate mother to a lot of her students and a lot of us admire her in different ways," said Gumbs. "She relates to a very small population here at UCF because she is such a minority and she has so many of the minority boxes checked."

According to mixedheritagecenter.org, Vest is a "mixedblood gay poet born and raised in Chicago."

"She's not the poster child for this," said senior creative writing major Isis Miller. "This has happened to so many other people, but we are glad that it is someone of prominence so people are actually paying attention."

Michael Freeman, the assistant director of diversity education and student engagement in the Office of Diversity Initiatives, said he hopes this incident will serve as a wake-up call and facilitate conversations about what campus feels like to everyone, including faculty and staff.

"When we have something happen on this campus, we have someone who steps forward and makes a statement," said Freeman. "We have contingency plans. We have emergency plans. We need to, as a campus, give these kinds of incidents and the emergencies around humanness the same level of respect and the same priority."

Freeman, who serves as an adviser to Equal (a registered student organization for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer culture community), student members of Equal and other UCF students will have a demonstration on Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to raise awareness of the issue.

"It's not just us yelling," Miller said of the scheduled demonstration. "I love this school, but part of loving something is critiquing it. It's criticizing it, finding what's wrong and changing it to make it better."

Gumbs said she thinks it's reasonable to request that the force receive diversity training on a regular basis, and while Vest has requested that the cops be disciplined, among other things, Miller would like to see something a little more serious.

"I want them terminated," she said. "I don't want a slap on the wrist. I want them gone."