Loni Love is opening up about being arrested for the first time while in Texas during her time in college, by a white cop.
The 48-year-old host of The Real, whose new book I Tried To Change So you Don’t Have To is released on June 23, grew up in Detroit, where she, ‘never had to deal with police. Everybody just got shot and that was it.’
That all changed when she went to college in Texas in the 1990s, as she described to People, where she was arrested with her friend Keisha over filling a free water cup with soda at a Mexican restaurant.
Opening up: Loni Love is opening up about being arrested for the first time while in Texas during her time in college, by a white cop
Love recalled she went out dancing with her friend Keisha after working all weekend as a cashier.
They went to a Mexican restaurant on their way back from campus, and while she was paying for her food, she described in her book seeing Keisha being ‘yanked away’ and put in handcuffs by a police officer.
When Love asked the officer what happened, the cop accused Keisha of filling a free water cup up with soda.
Cashier: Love recalled she went out dancing with her friend Keisha after working all weekend as a cashier
When Love tried to intervene, she was placed under arrest too… for the supposed ‘crime’ of ‘trespassing.’
She explained in the book that the white cop said, ‘Both you n***** bitches is going to jail. Now close your f***ing mouth before I close it for you.’
‘He put handcuffs on me. And that was my introduction to the criminal justice system,’ she told People.
Crime: When Love tried to intervene, she was placed under arrest too… for the supposed ‘crime’ of ‘trespassing’
Since trespassing is considered a felony in Texas, Love and her friend Keisha were separated in jail, with Love put in ‘with all the murderers, with all the felons.’
She spent the night with cellmates that included a woman who was beaten by the cops and had a ‘split lip’ during a speeding stop and a, ‘young pregnant woman who shot her baby-daddy in the leg in self-defense after he threatened to blow her head off.’
One of her sorority sisters bailed Love out before she was transferred to central booking the next morning.
Felons: Since trespassing is considered a felony in Texas, Love and her friend Keisha were separated in jail, with Love put in ‘with all the murderers, with all the felons’
She added she was able to only ‘take probation’ and have the charge ‘expunged from my record,’ adding, ‘it taught me a lot.’
Love said going through that process ‘took all my savings’ even with a public defender and it was ‘because of something so stupid.’
‘And you could say, well she did put soda in a water cup, but it was because we were two black girls,’ she said. ‘We know if it was two white girls, [the cop] would have said, “Don’t do that.”‘
She started studying the criminal justice system and started seeing ‘biases against people of color, especially black men,’ and it’s what made her want to be a host.
‘It kind of all connects with why I decided to go on to co-host a talk show, because I wanted to have those issues focused on as well. Because in my opinion, I thought that if you’re on a daily talk show and if once in a while, you can talk about the injustices and show it and discuss it, maybe we can all learn from it,’ she said.
Taught: She added she was able to only ‘take probation’ and have the charge ‘expunged from my record,’ adding, ‘it taught me a lot’