Illustration by Alex Fine

It’s about 10:45 p.m. on July 29, 2007. You’re driving home alone from work on a dark, lonely, rural road between Sedona and Cottonwood – a road without a single streetlight.
You come up behind a car that is driving erratically and pass it, then you see flashing lights and think, if it’s a cop, he’s not after me, he must be stopping the erratic driver.
You stop at a stop sign and turn onto the road leading to Cornville, and the flashing lights follow. Although it looks like a sheriff’s SUV, you can’t imagine why a legitimate cop would want to stop you, since you haven’t done anything wrong. You’re not a speeder, you’ve never had a ticket and your ’93 Nissan sedan isn’t exactly a hotrod.
You yell and gesture that you’re going down the road to Cornville, where there are at least two places that will be lighted at this time of night. You know this because you and your husband have discussed exactly where you’ll find the safety of lights if someone tries to stop you on a dark road. He worries about police impersonators. So do you. Recently, a gang in Phoenix posed as officers and raped their victims. It was on all the TV stations. The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office is concerned, too, and for years has promoted a clear policy: Motorists in doubt should call 911, drive to a lighted area before pulling over and ask for an officer’s identification.
Now, I have to ask readers the crucial question: What would you do in this situation?
I’ll tell you what I’d do and what most women I know would do: I sure as hell wouldn’t stop. I’d hightail it to those lights first.
And so did Dibor Roberts, a short, 120-pound, 48-year-old nursing assistant who had just become an American citizen after emigrating from Africa. She tells me she was afraid, and that everything happened so fast there was no time to react.
A mere half mile down the Cornville road – remember this distance – the SUV pulled in front of Roberts’ car, forcing her to stop. The man in uniform jumped from his car with such haste he didn’t even close his driver’s door, and he ran at her with a drawn gun.
Here’s my second crucial question: How long would it take you to dial “911-send” on your cell phone? Dibor Roberts didn’t have that much time before she says the screaming officer used his billy club to break out her rear driver’s window, grab her cell phone and throw it on the ground.
“He didn’t let me do anything,” she recalls, sitting at her kitchen table in her Cottonwood apartment in June. “He didn’t allow me to dial 911; he didn’t let me put the car out of gear. This all happened just like that (she snaps her fingers). I’m saying, ‘Why are you doing this? I just wanted to get to a lighted area.’ I said that several times.” (And there’s a witness attesting she did. More on that later.)