A Gwinnett County woman who held an election integrity panel over the weekend to educate Georgians says men who she believes were impersonating police officers showed up at her home and detained her hours before the event began.
“The long and short of what occurred, is I had an encounter with the police right before I went to the event,” Surrea Ivey told The Georgia Star News. “Initially, I didn’t think anything about it. When somebody – I say somebody because I subsequently found out it was not the police – when these individuals knocked on my door, they were in police uniform and they said they had reason to believe I was in possession of government equipment.”
Ivey said she let the men in because she has a pretty good relationship with local police.
“As we were engaging in conversation, I’m noticing what time it is, and I’m telling them, ‘Okay, it’s time for me to go because I have things to do,'” she said. “So, the conversation turned vile in the sense that they wanted to do a search. I said, ‘No, I don’t consent to a search and seizure, and you’ve already seen I don’t have any equipment in here from the government.’ So basically, I’m putting them out, and they’re like, ‘Well you gave us consent to come in here,’ and I said well, ‘Yes, I did consent, but anything without a warrant – since I invited you in I can kick you out.'”
That’s when the “officers” put Ivey in handcuffs. She said a shouting match ensued while the men took a webcam from her home before uncuffing her and leaving. They were driving an unmarked SUV, and, according to Ivey, were captured on her neighbor’s Ring doorbell camera.
She held the event anyway, which she said was marred by technical difficulties. Surrea has a background in computer technology, and believes that the difficulties could have been related to the prior incident, but said she did not know for certain.
Only after the election integrity panel did she begin to think that the men who came to her home might not have been police officers.
“So I go outside, I start thinking, ‘What if those weren’t police officers?’ There were just too many coincidences for me not to investigate,” she said. “So I called [the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Department] and I said, ‘Did you have a dispatch to my house?'”
“I gave her my name and address, and she was like, ‘No,'” Ivey said.
“And I was like, “Excuse me? Well, I need an officer or something because people in uniform showed up today and they cuffed me, and I want my camera back,'” the conservative activist said.
Ivey said the police are currently investigating the possibly criminal encounter.
Despite the drama, Ivey said 210 people attended the event, and that she was pleased with the turnout, even though she was not able to get through the entire program due to the technical difficulties.
This story is developing.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Georgia Star News and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Surrea Ivy” by Surrea Ivy.
