A Halifax-based folk music duo say police who pulled them over on an Ohio highway earlier this month accused them of having drugs in their rental car and questioned them about their allegiance in a strange interaction that lasted nearly an hour.
Sisters Cassie and Maggie MacDonald of the group Cassie and Maggie were driving a rental car on Interstate 70 and were talking on the phone with their mother when they noticed a police cruiser following them. Cassie MacDonald said the police car tailed them for a half-hour and then a second cruiser joined in and activated its emergency lights.
“We pulled over immediately. And then from there, things got stranger and stranger,” MacDonald told CBC’s Mainstreet Nova Scotia in a phone interview Thursday, recounting the March 5 incident.
After turning over their licence information, MacDonald said they were told their car was going to be searched for narcotics. Eventually, she said, officers told them the car had “tested positive” for narcotics and they were separated, with each taken to a different cruiser to be questioned.
“And still we hadn’t really any indication of why we’d been pulled over in the first place. And so I was back there and we were both being interrogated separately,” MacDonald said.
“They were very concerned — my officer who was talking to me — about fentanyl and he sort of was lecturing me almost about how much is coming through Canada and that being a huge issue.”
She said the officer asked what narcotics were in the car. She answered that there were no narcotics in the vehicle and said the officers searched the car and found nothing.
“And he came back and again was kind of curt and I got the sense that we really were not welcomed. That was kind of the overall impression,” she said.
At that point, MacDonald said, she was asked: “Which do you prefer? Canada or America?”
The question caught her off guard, she said, recalling that it felt like she was being tested.
“I said we love America. We’ve been touring here for over a decade and we have family scattered all across many states that we visit while we’re on tour. And we feel very close to this country and we’ve always been certainly very welcomed here. And so that seemed to kind of satisfy him enough and he let me go out of the car.”
MacDonald said the entire interaction lasted about 45 minutes and they were issued a warning for distracted driving. She conceded they had been passing their mobile phone back and forth while on speaker mode as they talked to their mother. At some points, MacDonald said, her sister had held the phone while driving.
MacDonald said the second officer had asked Maggie a similar question about whether she preferred Canada or the U.S.
She says they were both shaken by the encounter.
The sisters said this is the first time they’ve had an experience like this while touring in the U.S. They previously toured the country in December without issue, but said this time things felt more tense.
CBC News contacted the Guernsey County Sherrif’s Office for comment. In an e-mail, Major Jeremy Wilkinson said media coverage of the incident is “false reporting and hate mongering.”
Wilkinson said the deputies involved “were extremely professional and kind” and had reason to pull over the MacDonalds‘ rental car for distracted driving due to their use of a phone while driving.
“While our deputy was talking to the females about where they play music, he was told that they play in Canada and U.S. … and the deputy simply asked if they preferred Canada or the U.S. when it came to playing music. A question that is used everyday by people from different parts of the world when they come together.”
Wilkinson added that it’s routine to place drivers in the back of patrol vehicles since they can’t be in the vehicle when a drug detector dog is used to sniff the car. He said they were put in the patrol vehicles for their own safety since it was a cold day and they were on the side of a highway.
Despite their run-in with the law, the sisters say they plan to continue touring in the U.S.
“To pull out and to feel scared because of one interaction doesn’t really track with our band. … We love our fans and we feel like being there and performing and sharing our stories and music is the best remedy for this situation,” Cassie MacDonald said.
