A black Princeton professor has protested her arrest over a "single parking ticket," saying she was mistreated because of her race by two white police officers who searched her and handcuffed her to a table.
The Princeton Borough Police Department chief, however, said his officers had handled her arrest according to policy.
The divergent views of the arrest last week of Imani Perry, an African-American studies professor, by the two officers has reignited a discussion on social media about police tactics and racial profiling.
During a routine check, the officers - a man and a woman - discovered her driving privileges had been suspended and a warrant was out for her arrest over two unpaid parking violations from 2013.
"The warrant commands the officer to take the person into custody," Sutter said.
Perry was searched, handcuffed and placed in a squad car, the captain said. At the police station, she was handcuffed to a workstation and booked. Perry paid the fines - $130 - and was released.
Perry wrote about her arrest on Twitter and Facebook, saying it left her humiliated and frightened. She said she was on her way to work when she was pulled over "for a single parking ticket three years ago."
She said that the male officer conducted a "body search" on her even though a female officer was present. She said that she was not allowed to make a phone call before she was put into the squad car, and that she was later handcuffed to a table at the station.
Perry declined to comment when reached by email on Tuesday. But she wrote in posts on Monday that her accounts of the arrest had led to online abuse and suggestions that she had brought it on herself. She said she had also attracted supporters who questioned whether a white suspect would have been treated the same way.
"There are a number of commentators online who have repeated to me an all-too-common formulation: 'Well, if you hadn't done anything wrong this wouldn't have happened.' But this demand for behavioral perfection from Black people in response to disproportionate policing and punishment is a terrible red herring," Perry wrote.
Police departments across the nation have come under intense scrutiny over what has been criticized as unduly harsh treatment of minority suspects compared with that of whites. The episodes and the number of deaths - including the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a white officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and the chokehold death of Eric Garner while in police custody on Staten Island in New York - have led to violent protests, lawsuits and scrutiny by the Justice Department.
Another case that captured the national spotlight was the 2015 arrest of Sandra Bland, a black woman from Illinois, who was pulled over in Texas in a routine traffic stop that escalated into a confrontation. Bland spent three days in a county jail before she was found hanging in her cell.
Sutter, who said he had watched the dashboard camera footage of Perry's arrest, said he did not see anything out of the ordinary. He said the male officer had checked the "exterior portion of her clothing," meaning her jacket pockets and areas around her shoes.
Asked whether the female officer should have searched Perry, he said department policy does not require that only women search other women because only eight female officers were on the force and it was not practical. But he added: "When we can, we should. We will look at the policy."
Perry, who joined Princeton in 2009, is also an author. In 2011, she reviewed a book on race for The New York Times titled "Is Marriage for White People?"
During her arrest, Sutter said, Perry asked if she could text someone and was told not on the side of the road, but that they should travel a few minutes to the station. There, she was handcuffed to a bar fixed to a workstation, he said.
"Every single person brought back there is secured while the officer is processing," he said. Sometimes, he added, exceptions are made if a suspect is injured in a way that makes the handcuffing unfeasible.
He said he did not know how long she was handcuffed to the bar, but that the process usually takes 15 minutes. Perry posted bail, and after about an hour at the station, she was picked up by someone and left.
"I don't want to sound in any way like I am being defensive or arguing that Dr. Perry is not entitled to feel the way she does," Sutter said. "We are part of the larger law enforcement community in our current times in law enforcement. Therefore I understand how in this climate we can be perceived to be a microcosm of that."
Perry said on Facebook that she was keeping the arrest in perspective, and did not wish to compare it to Bland's case or to others in which the consequences were more dire. But she added: "I hope that this circle of attention will be part of a deeper reckoning with how and why police officers behave the way they do, especially towards those of us whose flesh is dark."
She said that if the officers had behaved according to protocol during her arrest, then "we have a serious problem with policing in the society.