Utah sheriff’s deputy sparks outrage by searching for Black shoplifting suspect with a lasso

Utah’s aghast Black community says footage evokes history of enslavement and lynching

A sheriff’s deputy in Grand County, Utah, was caught on body camera wielding a lasso during the search for a Black shoplifting suspect, giving rise to calls for accountability and training of police officers.

The Black community in Utah is also aghast at the footage, which they say evoked a time of enslavement and lynching.

The incident took place in July this year. In bodycam footage, Sheriff’s Deputy Amanda Edwards can be seen wielding a lasso along with a few other officers looking for a Black homeless man who was accused of stealing a pair of sunglasses from a gift shop.

In the video, one fellow deputy can be heard saying: “That’s going to look really bad, if you use that.”

Ms Edwards responds: “Better than a taser.”

One bystander asked, “Are you going to lasso him?”

“That was my plan, man. I mean, it’s better than running, right?” Ms Edwards added.

During the search when she chances upon a Utah Highway Patrol trooper, she said: “I’ve been waiting for this moment for quite some time.”

The officer then realises bystanders are filming her and said: “Dude, so many people took pictures of me with my rope. What are they going to say?”

Ms Edwards later claimed she “replied to each individual in a joking manner”.

The incident has caused outrage in Utah’s Black community, with calls emerging for more accountability and sensitivity training for the police.

“They never caught up to him, and that’s fortunate,” Jeanetta Williams, president of the NAACP’s Salt Lake branch said.

She added that any Black visitors or residents who came across the deputy “could literally have a heart attack because they would flash back to the lynchings that went on. This isn’t a rodeo, and this is no way to apprehend a human being”.

“I can’t see anybody watching it and saying they don’t see a problem with it, especially when they know the history of, you know, the rope, the lynching of African Americans, all of that,” she continued.

Others have said the footage triggered inter-generational trauma.

Mario Mathis, from the Utah Chapter of Black Lives Matter, told KSL TV News that “this is post-George Floyd”.

“That’s when white people in America seemingly woke up and realised that there was a disconnect in the way that police officers treat Black people and people of colour, versus white people,” he explained.