Ohio woman says she kept getting pulled over for speeding only when she was in her car. Then she learns she was registered as a black woman

It’s one thing to hear about systemic issues, but it’s another thing entirely when you’re living through them because of an administrative error. A content creator, Lisa, recently took to TikTok and Instagram to share a wild, eye-opening series about how she realized she had been legally classified as an African American woman in the state of Ohio for a decade. She alleged that this bureaucratic mistake led to a consistent pattern of being targeted by law enforcement. 

In her first video, Lisa explains how hearing a news report about racial disparities in traffic stops encouraged her to share her story. She claimed that when she was 18, she had a ticket she forgot about. That, however, then turned into a night in the Hamilton County Justice Center when she was stopped because her boyfriend allegedly antagonized a police officer. She ended up in a holding cell for hours, a terrifying experience, but never put any other thought to it. 

After that, she noticed that she would often get pulled for speeding, but only in her car. She explained the cause in her second post. Years later, a state highway patrolman pulled her over on 275 and asked a question that caught her off guard. According to Lisa, the officer asked, “are you African-American or mixed?” When she clarified that she was white, the officer told her that his computer system identified her as an African-American female. 

She identified that as the reason she was always flagged while driving

Lisa claimed that the officer promised to fix the record, but instead, it seems he simply added her as an alias. This meant that for years, she was effectively living with two identities in the state’s system. She just didn’t know it. Lisa would drive other cars and be fine, but kept getting pulled over in her cars. She stated that she just assumed it was her record. 

It’s important to note that these are Lisa’s allegations. In the rest of her posts, she provides screenshots and records to support her story. However, there hasn’t been official confirmation from the police departments involved. In one case, she pulled up records from the Hamilton County Clerk of Courts in her video. 

“As you can see, still to this day on my record, it says that I have tickets as an African American person in the state of Ohio, in the county of Hamilton County,” she showed in part three of her series. She claims this classification followed her everywhere, even affecting background checks for employment.

The frustration became unbearable when she was pulled over in the Reading Bridal District for going just a few miles over the speed limit. She recounts how the officer allegedly made her step out of the car, put her in handcuffs, and placed her in the back of a police cruiser just to issue a speeding ticket. In a different case, a driver was arrested for requesting a female officer at a traffic stop.

When Lisa later tried to file a complaint at the police office, she claimed the woman at the desk looked at her record and confirmed, “Oh my, you’re, you’re black.” It wasn’t until she was 28 that the state record was corrected.

This isn’t just isolated to Ohio, as a recent report from Arlington Report indicates. Per a 2025 report from the Arlington Police Department, Black drivers made up the highest percentage of those stopped by police, accounting for 36.5% of all stops. 

The report also noted that Black drivers had the highest percentage of vehicle searches at 52%. Arlington police maintain that their stops aren’t racially motivated and that officers often don’t know a driver’s race before initiating a stop, but the statistics concern community members and local officials. Especially when some traffic stops get violent, like the trooper who smashed the driver’s window.

Lisa’s story sparked a strong reaction. One TikToker commented, “My brothers a traffic sergeant. This is a real thing. It shouldn’t show anybody’s race because it just allows for discrimination before contact is even made.” Another Instagrammer noted, “When we say systemic we mean systemic! Now imagine if you had some color to you, and they could target you on sight.”

Lisa says she is sharing this story not to create division, but to highlight a reality that she feels many people choose to ignore. “This shit has been going on for years and years and years and years,” she says in her final video. “It continues to go on even until today, and I feel like I make a lot of funny videos and there’s like a little bit of humor to my stories and the things that I’ve been through, but like there is nothing funny about racism.”