On March 27, Mojgan Hajmohammadali was stopped by a police officer for jaywalking, after dashing across K Street NW against the light. The cop demanded her ID; she refused. They went back and forth on the issue until he reached for his handcuffs and threatened to arrest her. She relented. When he read her name on the license, says Hajmohammadali, who is Persian, he got nasty.

“He said, ‘Why don’t you go back to your country?’” she says. “’What are you doing here if you are complaining so much?’”

Hajmohammadali, an American citizen, has lived in the U.S. for 13 years. “I was in a state of shock,” she says. There were about 10 other officers writing tickets that day, and they were all having courteous conversations with their offending jaywalkers, she says.

Master patrol officer Jeffery Clay, who stopped her, says he he’s been on the force for 25 years and has never had a complaint. “I don’t know nobody’s race. That’s ludicrous,” he says.

Hajmohammadali plans to write a letter of complaint to Chief Charles Ramsey about Clay’s alleged behavior. The one upside of the situation? “He only gave me a warning,” she says.