Dakarai Larriett wants Alabama to be safer for all. (Photo: Dakarai Larriett for Alabama, Canva)
US Senate hopeful Dakarai Larriett wants Alabama to be safer for all Alabamians, especially where interactions with the police are concerned. And after the Nov. 4 elections, in which Democrats won in overwhelming margins across the country, Larriett feels like a safer day is closer than ever.
”You know, [success is] not linear. And that’s what I keep reminding people. We have to be patient. There are going to be these years and times when we have setbacks and inflection points that propel us forward. And that’s what the last couple of years have felt back felt like-a lot of setbacks,” he said to Just Add Color. “And I think after what we saw November 4th, folks are getting energized. We’re coming into a new year and we have a real opportunity. To put the right leaders in place that want to do the right things for Alabamians and Americans. So I’m feeling optimistic cautiously.”
Larriett feels very strongly about what he and other Democrats can bring to the Alabama Congress and how he can change Alabama’s stance on policing and incarceration. One such name on the Democratic ballot will be Doug Jones, the former US Senator for Alabama who originally made his name in the 1990s and early 2000s bringing justice to the families of the four girls killed in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing.
“We have a lot of interesting and strong candidates…and this feels very much unlike anything I’ve seen before in the last five years, in that we have people with strong, strong resumes,” he said. “These are not vanity runs. These are people who can step into the job and be day one ready, and with Doug Jones at the top of the ticket as that elder statesman. I think that sets a really good tone and it will energize the base and remind. Everyone that we can win here in Alabama, if we focus on issues that matter to a broad range of people.”
Living through fear
Larriett’s own lived experience also provides the basis for his conviction to change Alabama on the national level.
In 2024, Larriett, who was in Michigan at the time, was stopped by Michigan State Police troopers at night. According to Larriett’s description of the night, there was no reason for the stop, and during the harrowing event, Larriett was subjected to homophobic and racist taunting, discrimination, torture, and even attempts by the police to plant evidence of drugs.
“April 10, 2024, I was driving through the state of Michigan and was racially profiled, tortured by the Michigan State Police, put through seven sobriety tests in the cold, accused of everything–running red lights, driving under the influence of alcohol, driving under the influence of drugs,” he said. “I was taken to the jailhouse and accused of smuggling drugs into the jailhouse by way of ingestion. I was forced to use the restroom publicly in front of the booking officers and the troopers, and many months later got the body and dash cam and saw that they were actually trying to plant drugs in my vehicle. They wanted a total ruin and they wanted a drug charge that night.”
Larriett has since sued the Michigan police for $10 million in damages.
“I tried to get justice from that night, and I still am to this day. I am in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, one level below the US Supreme Court, and I’m gonna keep on fighting,” he added. “And I just realized I need to position myself in a way that I can write the laws and administer justice instead of just kind of shouting from the outside and protesting. And that work is important, but I have started to offer my own legislation that will prevent this thing from happening to anyone else.”
A life of fighting for what’s right
Larriett’s background is one of advocacy. A child of Birmingham, having attended WJ Christian Middle School and the Alabama School of Fine Arts, Larriett has been in advocacy work for 20 years, including working in the South Bronx of New York City, advocating for homeless and LGBT youth. He also serves as a board member of Proximity Pride Center and worked in harm reduction for the National Harm Reduction Coalition. After moving back to Alabama, he went back to his alma mater, the University of Alabama, and worked within the alumni association to advocate for equal, cost-effective access to education.
That sense of advocacy is alive in Larriett’s pursuit to change the status quo regarding how Black people are treated by police. It’s a treatment that Black people, Black men especially, know all too well. However, Larriett’s feelings about what happened to him that night haven’t tainted his view of the good police can do. Having grown up in Birmingham, a majority-Black city, Larriett is familiar with seeing police officers as people who represent his culture and racial identity. He also said he has family members who are in the police, bringing his feelings about the police to a personal level.
“ I was 42 when this incident happened. I had never had a negative interaction with the police. Always positive, always professional. In fact, I have cousins in Birmingham Police Department, FBI, Homeland Security. I know Police Chief Pickett. That was my experience with the police. That was my experience and this [negative interaction with Michigan police] was completely different.”
“This is not at all about being anti-police. It’s about accountability, it’s about fairness, and it’s about protecting, in particular, Black folks because when we have unnecessary interactions with the police, we tend to get murdered and we saw that with Jabari Peoples. That was a really horrific incident in Homewood.”
Larriett said that as a response to police brutality in the state, he has authored legislation he calls The Motorist Bill of Rights.
“[I]t ensures that we are protected in our interactions with the police. It ensures that body and dash cam are released to the public, specifically the families and the principal after these incidents happen, and propose that body and dash cam be uploaded to a third party neutral cloud where public defenders and families can access immediately at no cost,” he said. “After an incident, in my case, I had to fight for five and a half months to get the body and dash cam. I spent $600. It was edited, it was shared with the judge, and the judge dismissed my case because it was edited in a way to make the police look good and to make me look like I was a criminal.”
Even with one of the police officers being a Black man, Larriett said that the incident highlighted how any police officer, including Black police officers, are trained to view Black and brown people as threats or subjects of ridicule.
”I immediately felt a calm brush over me when I saw a Black officer. I don’t think that we can emphasize this enough for people who are non-Black. Black males see the police and we’re pulled over at 3:00 AM in a dark alley, we immediately think we’re going to be killed. And that is what my friend and I experienced in that alley. In fact, I made a point of stopping in a well-lit part of the alley and one of the troopers, George Canyon, brought me to this dark end, and I thought it was a death march. I thought that I was going to be shot,” said Larriett. “So imagine [doing] all of these sobriety tests. 3:00 AM the cold. …I texted my friend almost in real time…and asked him right then what was [the Black officer] asking?”
What he was asking was where did Larriett and his friend get their nice car and making fun of Dakarai’s name by using a “very exaggerated, embarrassing accent.”
“This is part of their culture,” he said of police officer training, adding that he wants to create a culture of policing that ensured “they are people-centered, not focused on…revenue” such as filling quotas for traffic stops and speeding tickets.
The sober reality of The Alabama Solution
To go even further, Larriett also wants to tackle the injustice hidden behind the barred doors of Alabama’s prisons. The recent HBO documentary, The Alabama Solution, revealed how the prison industrial complex not only serves as a silent financial support for the state, but how that support allows the prisons to do heinous crimes to its prisoners with little-to-no oversight. The documentary bravely shows how several mysterious deaths within the Alabama prison system have gone without investigation, if they get reported at all.
Larriett said that the pipeline to prison starts early with the gaps in the educational system.
”School pipeline policing over policing. It is systemic and intentional,” he said, adding how most of the prison population is Black.
“It starts with a Black student being suspended…it starts with a lack economic [opportunities] and on and on, lack of access to mental health, criminalizing mental health, things of that nature,” he said. “So that’s why my campaign is really about those fundamentals that Alabamians tell me matter to them. It is education, giving everyone a fair shot, healthcare and then economic opportunity. And once we start making those investments in our people, we’re going to see a dramatic draw down in the need for these mega prisons.”
“[I]f these prisons are gonna make us safer, you know, locking them up and this is the way to do it, then why haven’t we gotten saved?” he added. “Why do we have so much gun violence in our state and in our nation? Alabama has one of the highest percentages of prison populations and so much gun violence and death.”
Larriett recently spoke out against Alabama’s continued relationship with corruption within prisons by addressing the issues with HB 202, a state bill that aimed to give police officers expanded qualified immunity. Larriett said that with such protection, how can citizens who are mistreated ever get justice?
”I spoke out against HB 202 at the Alabama State House well before the documentary came out, and I told them that this is basically making it open season for incarcerated people and people who look like us,” he said. “It’s just so upsetting because since 2020, the state spent $57 million defending corrections officers for brutalizing incarcerated people. And instead of fixing that problem, not even acknowledging it, they said, ‘Well, let’s just create a law that now provides qualified immunity expansion, not just for police, but also for corrections officers.'”
Change is coming–but only if we act
With so much to change, Larriett doesn’t feel bogged down or scared. Instead, he feels emboldened and invigorated by the challenge. Again, the Democratic mandate that occurred Nov. 4 lays the groundwork for a potentially new government outlook for Alabama and the rest of the nation. Larriett wants politicians and activists to capitalize on the successful efforts of Nov. 4.
”How do we activate those people?” he said, regarding future voter turnout. “How do we, for example, improve our turnout rates here in state? August was the statewide municipal elections in Alabama, and many municipalities saw 15 percent, 20 percent turnout. Gosh, what if we could get that to 50? Mm-hmm. What if we could get that to 40? That would truly drive some different conversations in the State House.”
You can learn more about Larriett’s policies and campaign at dakarailarriett.com.