‘White Privilege Card’ works on police during traffic stop

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It was 3:37 a.m. on a Thursday morning in July when Anchorage, Alaska officers Charles Worland and Nicholas Bowe spotted a vehicle weaving suspiciously in a lane. But when they pulled over the driver to see if alcohol or drugs were a factor in the dubious driving, they didn’t get as far as checking the woman’s actual I.D. because she had a piece of documentation they held in higher regard than the laws they’re paid to enforce. 

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That document? A joke “White Privilege Card” you can order on Amazon for US$7.99. When handed the card instead of the license and asked if they like it, one of the officers responds, “that’s hilarious.” The public doesn’t seem to agree. 

Anchorage Daily News caught wind of the incident after Mimi Israelah posted a selfie with the officers and her special get-out-of-trouble-free card to Facebook. The post has since been removed, but detailed how the Filipina woman, who was allegedly on her way from former POTUS Donald Trump’s political rally in Anchorage to pick up a pizza, couldn’t find her driver’s license and showed the gimmick card instead. 

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“We recognize that the post, what was contained in that post, caused a bit of a public uproar, and there were a lot of people that saw that and did not like that post and had negative reactions to that — thought it was an inappropriate post — and we recognize that,” police Deputy Chief Sean Case said in a statement. 

Both officers went on administrative leave during the department’s 11-day investigation, but are now back at work. Local sergeant and president of the police union Jeremy Conkling says he’s not surprised.

But the police faction seems to be sticking by their boys in blue. Jeremy Conkling, a sergeant with the department and the president of the police union, says he’s not surprised the officers didn’t write a citation for the minor offence of not having your license while driving. 

“Especially in this circumstance, where you had a very, very low-level minor offence and the officers are really just focused on trying to find DUIs — I’m not at all surprised they didn’t write a citation. I don’t know that a lot of officers would have written that citation, if any,” Conkling said.

What’s your take? Should police have cracked down harder on the unprepared pizza delivery person? Or is this all just a relatively harmless joke being blown out of proportion? Let us know in the comments.