“We were unlawfully stopped, handcuffed, and searched at gunpoint not long after the police killings of George Floyd, Daunte Wright, and 13-year-old Adam Toledo.”

We have learned that the “Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) filed an internal complaint with the Medford Police Department (MPD) on behalf of Jeremiah Mamousette and Hibaq Warsame, two Black college students who were illegally stopped, removed from their vehicle, searched, handcuffed and held at gunpoint in their hometown by nearly a dozen MPD officers in full view of the public road.”

More from their media release about the situation below:

On the afternoon of July 8, 2021, Mr. Mamousette and Ms. Warsame were driving through the Winthrop Street rotary in Medford when they noticed a number of police cruisers, some of which were making U-turns in the road to travel in their direction. A cruiser immediately behind them turned on its blue police lights and ordered them out of the vehicle over the loudspeaker. MPD officers then proceeded to unlawfully search Mr. Mamousette and Ms. Warsame and restrain them with handcuffs, without giving any explanation for the stop or the officers’ activity. A number of officers remained nearby with their guns trained on Mr. Mamousette and Ms. Warsame for the entirety of the interaction. The officers did not discover anything of concern during the illegal search and eventually shared that they had stopped the two because of a vague anonymous tip regarding a gun. Rather than apologizing, MPD officers referred to the entire interaction as standard policy. 

“We were unlawfully stopped, handcuffed, and searched at gunpoint not long after the police killings of George Floyd, Daunte Wright, and 13-year-old Adam Toledo,” said Mr. Mamousette. “All I could think during this entire traumatic encounter was that we would be the next names on the list of victims.”

Read the full statement here and check out the petition from a responding coalition that includes Our Revolution Medford, Mystic Valley NAACP, Mobilize Medford, Safe Medford, People Power Medford here.