It’s an image we’ve seen all too often. A Black driver being pulled over for the most innocuous act. Moments later, the motorist is either arrested, or killed, and in the case of someone like Sandra Bland, both. An investigation ensues, and due to some technicality, it is deemed as the officer simply doing their duty.

On the night of March 6, the former happened to Juanisha C. Brooks in Fairfax County. According to The Washington Post, Brooks was pulled over by Virginia State Police Trooper Robert G. Hindenlang while she was driving home back in March. Brooks asked the officer why she was being pulled over, but he refused to say. He did not inform her that her taillights were out. Instead, he told Brooks to exit her car so he could show her why she was being pulled over.

Brooks told Hindenlang that she did not want to get out of her car. The trooper then unlocked her door and violently dragged her out of her vehicle as she begged for him to stop. He spun her against the car and placed her in handcuffs.

Brooks then refused to take a sobriety test after telling Hindenlang that she had one drink. He told her, “You’re under arrest for driving under the influence.”

“Why were your eyes so watery when I pulled up?” Hindenlang asked Brooks.

“Why were my eyes watering?” she answered. “Because people are being shot by the police, I’m freaking nervous.”

After being transported to the Fairfax County jail, Brooks took a breathalyzer two times, which rendered a 0.0 blood alcohol level. She was charged with eluding police, resisting arrest, reckless driving and failing to have headlights on.

Yesterday, all charges were dropped against Brooks, a government employee, after it was determined that the trooper had no legal merit to detain her.

“I went through emotional trauma,” Brooks told the Post. “I haven’t slept a full night since. Three hours here, four hours there. Every single day I think about it.”

Brooks was able to finally make it home, but the story sadly does not end there. This is the trauma that Black drivers face on a regular basis, and at what point will it end? The Virginia General Assembly earlier this year banned police from pulling over drivers with dark tail lights, yet it is still happening.

These are the kinds of situations that has led to louder cries for police reform in the Commonwealth. Fortunately Juanisha is alive to tell her story, but what about the next one? Will there be a day in which simply driving while Black is no longer a crime?

(Notes from the story also appeared in The Grio and Revolt)