Caldwell, NJ – A New Jersey mother is angry after a local Republican and Caldwell Township employee called the cops on her 9-year-old daughter for killing lantern flies earlier this month. Monique Joseph spoke out against the incident at last week’s regular meeting of the township council.
She called upon the township to use the incident as an opportunity to speak out against racial profiling.
In the call to the police, Gordon Lawshe reportedly told dispatchers, “There’s a little Black woman walking, spraying stuff on the sidewalks and trees. I don’t know what the hell she’s doing; it scares me though.”
The girl was his 9-year-old neighbor who was simply killing the invasive lantern flies in their yard.
“And [he] included that she’s wearing a hoodie,” she told the council. “My 9-year-old daughter Bobbi had a hoodie on her person but did not have this hoodie on her head. … It is sickening and scary to hear my neighbor use triggering words that have resulted in the death of too many Black and brown children and adults at the hands of the police: Black, hoodie, ‘I’m scared.’ Those are triggered words.”
Lawshe is a former Republican township council member that works for the town’s senior center. He is also co-chairman and treasurer of the Caldwell Republican Party.
“It is sickening and scary to hear my neighbor use triggering words that have resulted in the deaths of too many Black and Brown children and adults at the hands of police. ‘Black,’ ‘hooded’ and ‘I’m scared’ – those are trigger words,” Joseph said.
Joseph said the Caldwell Police Department has been extremely kind to her and her daughter Bobbi since the incident, inviting them to the police station and even calling upon young Bobbi to help a nearby elderly resident with a lantern fly problem.