Traffic Stop

WARNING! THIS POST CONTAINS DISTURBING DETAILS

The officers probably didn’t want to do it. And nobody can know whether the woman driving had rolled past other cops who also didn’t want to stop her. Or maybe they didn’t get a look, a close enough look at the plates. Temporary license plates. In Maryland it is not uncommon for drivers to abuse temporary plates by driving past their expiration dates.

But the officers turned on the cruiser’s lights and proceeded with what they thought was a routine, if slightly irregular, traffic stop.

But it wasn’t routine, and irregular can’t begin to describe what really happened.

It is the type of thing that police officers everywhere would find horrifying no matter how many years they have served. Yeah, that kind. The one which any cop would wish they had never made. Because no matter what, it is life-changing. It has to be. Because no human can anticipate horror like the brand these cops had to face the second those lights started flashing.

And you’d think, in the end, that the motorist would have tried to flee, make a chase of it. That they did not at first do so may be the most terrifying part of all.

They got out of the cruiser. Or cruisers; which is not clear and makes no difference.

Nicole Johnson turned out not to have a driver’s license. Driving without a license is a moving violation which could, but rarely, put one behind bars. I got six months once for driving at night using an “inspection tag”, a kind of temporary tag meant for moving your car to an inspection station and back to the DMV to prove it has been certified road worthy, then get standard license plates (Maryland requires two, front and rear). I was fortunate in that the judge placed me on probation. I had to be Peter Perfect for the six months and if I was, the record would be cleared. I was Peter Perfect.

Nicole Johnson seemed unconcerned. So she had no driver’s license. So what?

It’s Essex. A place where there are lots of poor neighborhoods. Drivers with no licenses are likely common. It can be difficult to have a shit job, feed your kids and afford rent plus monthly insurance premiums. That’s life in a country where the minimum amount you can legally pay a full time worker is below the poverty level. You think it’s okay, paying someone less than what it takes to be called “poor?” Try living that way and maybe you’ll feel different.

But there was more to Nicole Johnson not having a driver’s license and her income than met the eyes. Much, much more.

And when I first heard about it I knew somehow that I would have to write this post.

At some point, officers told Johnson that her car had to be towed. She was driving with more than an expired temporary license plate. Hers was fake. You don’t get to drive home and be told to park it. Not in this state. You can’t even have a car without insurance and plates sitting in your back yard. And for every day that your car goes uninsured the financial penalty piles up. I find it to be an unfair law which puts the poor at a severe disadvantage. But in this state you may as well criminalize poverty, though there’s plenty of it. The poor don’t catch lucky breaks. They catch visits to Courtroom B and cell block 4. Social services don’t give a rat’s ass about their kids. You don’t want to know what’s next for them.

Nicole Johnson. Age, 33. African American. In this state she could easily have been white, 23, and you’d get the same result. Because poverty and mental illness know no boundaries, no limits. Even if Johnson was white, she was going to be busted.

She said of the car being towed and officers ordering her to show up in District Court within five days, “It don’t matter. I won’t be here in five days and y’all going to see me on the news, y’all going to see me on the news making my big debut.”

Wait, what? What’s that supposed to mean? Any officer would already be on edge, but those words, those arrogant, callous, cryptic words, had to have been chilling. Their eyes would have widened for the briefest second, then narrowed. I know. I’ve made cops do it. I didn’t mean to, though. Nicole Johnson did.

It is summer in Baltimore County. The heat out west has not affected us much. Less than an average summer, truth be told. But summer all the same. Heat does things that make natural things hang about. So it was that officers caught the unmistakable stench of decomp, short for decomposing bodies. What happened next was the thing no officer anticipates, the thing that haunts any cop for the rest of their days. It leaves a residual shock.

I call it trauma. A damaged cop is left in place of one who hit the streets that day, tough, jaded from all the evil things they’ve seen, weary inside because the evil has become a routine. There isn’t enough help for them. Having counseling, as in the military, is often viewed as a deficiency, a weakness to be chided. The hard code of the brotherhood of officers guarantees that sometime in the future, a traumatized person wearing a badge may break and make the news himself.

A bag with a suitcase inside revealed maggots. And then…the body of a child.

Finally Johnson ran. Presumably on foot. It was incongruous considering her declaration and arrogance she had displayed moments ago. She knew she had no hope of escape.

Eventually another body was discovered in the trunk. Johnson’s deceased niece and nephew. Malnourished, abused and post morten exams revealed months of malnourishment. With a decomposing body it is sometimes difficult to fix the cause of death. Holes appear in the dermis which could be wound or decomposition…or maggots. Underlying bone and tissues must be carefully examined. The girl, Johnson said, had been struck by her, then fallen and fatally struck her head. That’s first degree murder. A homicide straight and pure. Johnson said the boy died of blood loss from a leg wound.

There are many questions remaining. Johnson was arrested and charged with multiple felony and misdemeanor charges and waived a bond hearing. She won’t see daylight for a very long time.

The questions, though, linger. Why had neighbors never asked any? Why had no reports made it to Child Protective Services?

And why was their mother unable to care for her children, leaving them in her sister’s care? Why did she wait so long before enquiring as to their welfare, and why did she try to get her children back, only to have her sister not show, then wait for so long to get police involved? She never heard anything until police told her that the children were dead.

These riddles are more than troubling. They stay with you and nag at the soul, begging you to find answers. The questions will never be answered. Nicole Johnson made the news. Her debut is accomplished. She will go down in police legend as a monster straight from Hell. Something in a human body which, they’ll tell themselves, is not human.

Nobody knows what they’re going through, but Baltimore County Police Chief Melissa Hyatt has said that they were seriously affected. Only time will tell if they can continue to do police work. The community,, family and friends, Hyatt said, were all deeply affected. She apologized on behalf of the BCPD and the county for such a monstrous tragedy. Because that’s the only thing she could do. It appears that she, too has been touched malignantly by the monster inside Nicole Johnson. It has been speculated that the boy may have been in the trunk since May, 2020.

As a community and a state where they have to handle that which never can be, Johnson is headed to a place where other women will have heard of the high profile case. They will be waiting for her.

In the meantime, coroners continue their forensic work, nobody knows how the mother feels, and word of the case spreads around the world because it’s too horrible not to.

And we are left with a decision.

When we are going to do something about the horrors awaiting the children of America. Will we continue turning away, not saying anything, reading that the kids we knew were neglected have become a homicide statistic?

Can we continue such bestiality and the approval of it by our silence?

What were the last months of these kids like?

What were the last minutes of their lives like?

You have to imagine it and see through their eyes the terror, the unfair finality of it all.

Because if we can’t do that, we are doomed. And in God’s eyes, perhaps that would be for the best. What does it mean to be human if we are really no better than this?

What does it all mean?

Sources WJZ CBS Baltimore

And WBAL TV