TikToker says Arlington officers held woman at gunpoint. Police say video missing context
A video posted by a woman Friday night claiming Arlington police held her at gunpoint “execution style,” according to the video description, and then told her it was a “learning curve” is missing crucial context, according to the police department.
The video has gained traction on TikTok and Twitter, where at least two posts of the same video have netted more than 1 million views.
Police said that the video, posted on TikTok by a woman identified in a GoFundMe fundraiser as Dawnyale Shanks and who goes by Ja’lia Marie on the social media platform, shows about a minute or so of a 30-minute conversation between police and Shanks. Police also said that a video where Shanks accuses officers of saying they were erasing surveillance video conveys inaccurate information about officers’ actions.
Shanks did not respond to Star-Telegram requests for an interview.
Police said they believed after watching surveillance video that the suspect in an armed robbery at a convenience store in the 2700 block of East Abram Street went to a nearby motel after the crime.
When officers went to the motel to look for him, someone there directed them to a specific room on the second floor and said he might be inside, according to police.
Officers went to that room and, because they believed the suspect was armed, approached it with their weapons drawn “for their own safety and the safety of other people at the motel,” police said in an emailed statement to the Star-Telegram.
Officers then gave commands for everyone inside the motel room to come out and detained a woman when she walked out of the room, police said.
When police searched the room and determined the woman had nothing to do with the incident and that they’d received inaccurate information, they released the woman, according to the statement.
According to police, a patrol sergeant later went to the motel lobby to speak with the woman and her mother about what had happened. Police said body-camera footage shows the conversation lasted about 30 minutes.
The Star-Telegram has filed an open records request for the body-camera footage, as well as the surveillance footage that led officers to believe the suspect was at the motel.
Police said that during the conversation the sergeant apologized to the woman, answered questions from her and her family and gave them information about the department’s victim services team in case she needed additional assistance. The team provides crisis counseling, crisis intervention, criminal justice support and advocacy, according to the city’s website.
Viral TikTok video
The original video posted to TikTok starts with Shanks speaking with the patrol sergeant in the hotel lobby.
“So this is a learning curve for you?” Shanks asks at the start of the video. “Putting guns to an innocent person’s back? That’s a learning curve?”
The patrol sergeant, who has not been identified, tells Shanks she didn’t say it was a learning curve but “every call, there is something to learn.”
Police said body-camera footage shows that before the start of the TikTok video the sergeant “was trying to explain that officers learn from every incident they respond to.”
“That’s a learning curve,” Shanks says in the TikTok video, her voice shaky. “You put guns to my face. That’s a learning curve for you? That’s a learning curve? You put guns to my back. That’s a learning curve? I could have died. And that’s a ... learning curve to you?”
Shanks repeats that as another woman, who police said was her mother, encourages her to calm down. Some on social media have commented that the person telling Shanks to calm down is the sergeant. The first time the person says, “You gotta calm down, baby,” the sergeant is clearly in the video and is not speaking.
The video then cuts to footage of police in another room, with one officer visible in the doorway.
“Why are you wiping the surveillance video?” Shanks asks in this clip.
“Ma’am, I can’t elaborate on our investigation,” the officer says.
“Why are you wiping the surveillance video?” she asks again.
The officer replies, saying either “Watching” or “Watch it.”
“We’re not allowed to wipe it,” the officer says.
“I just heard you say until you finish wiping the surveillance video,” Shanks says in the TikTok clip.
“You misheard,” the officer replies before speaking into his radio.
Police said in the statement body-camera footage shows the officer in this clip was speaking to someone else before the recording on TikTok started and said he needed to finish watching the surveillance video and that Shanks misheard that as “wiping.”
Police said that, after a preliminary review, “we do not believe any officers violated department policies at this time.”
GoFundMe and TikTok update
Shanks posted two more videos to TikTok on Saturday where she provides an update. She also created a GoFundMe where she says she was the victim of police brutality and is raising money to hire an attorney. The campaign had raised $4,140 of its $50,000 goal as of 7 p.m. Tuesday.
“I’m not looking for revenge, OK?” Shanks says of the GoFundMe campaign in the first of the two update videos. “I don’t want to be popular. I don’t want to be exploited. I don’t want to be the poster girl for any agendas or ulterior motives. I don’t want any sympathy. I just want justice.”
She says in the first update video she was held at gunpoint by “several officers.”
“They were full battle rattle,” Shanks says in the video. “I’m talking guns, obviously, shields, vests, megaphones, flashlights.”
Police said, because it was dark, the suspect for whom they were searching was believed to be armed and they could not see inside the room, officers did have one shield and one megaphone.
“[It was] not only for their own safety but for the safety of everyone in that area,” police said.
She says police lied, manipulated, bullied and coerced her and had her detained in the backs of two different police vehicles. She says she was denied water, phone access, and restroom privileges but was told she was not in trouble the whole time. She says she shouldn’t have been detained because they were looking for a man.
“I know I look like my daddy but damn,” Shanks says in the first update video.
She says when she made the video toward the end of the conversation with the patrol sergeant she was in shock and hadn’t fully processed what had happened. That’s why she repeated “learning curve” and other phrases “16 and a half times,” she says in response to a question from another TikTok user.
“When she referred to my life possibly ending as a learning curve, it just registered, it just clicked that I’m nothing but an experiment to these people,” Shanks said in her TikTok video.
She says that her mother told her to calm down even though she was “just as upset as I was” because three other officers came into the area shortly after she started recording the original TikTok video. These officers are not seen in the TikTok video.
“She didn’t want me to make the situation worse, so she was just telling me to calm down,” Shanks says in the first update video.
She refers to the time speaking with the sergeant in the motel lobby as part of a “two and a half hour investigation.”
Police said Shanks was detained from approximately 8:37 p.m. to 9:46 p.m.
In one of the update videos Shanks posted to TikTok, she says she was denied any sort of compensation from victim services, which officers directed her to contact, “because they said they don’t have any programs for people that were accidentally held at gunpoint by their officers.” She says she had to pay to relocate from the motel and was denied compensation for that as well as any compensation for “legal or medical fees.”
A police spokesman said he was not able to immediately comment on what sort of help victim services provides and for which of those services Shanks would be qualified.
“I don’t want to make this a race war,” Shanks says in her second update video, posted right after the first. “I don’t think this was a Black issue as much as it was a blue issue because there were several Black officers on the scene as well that were just as bad, if not worse. ... I love everyone. I love all of you. Black, white, blue. Civilian, police officer. That being said, let’s have compassion for one another.”
This story was originally published March 22, 2022 at 9:16 PM.