Robyn Porter (Markeshia Ricks photo)
Monday, November 7, 2017 -
Robyn Porter was cleaning out a cluttered back room in her home when she first learned that her son had been arrested.
She was listening to gospel music, dancing, and chatting on the phone with a girlfriend when her mom walked into the kitchen. Tears streaming down her face, she told Porter that Porter’s 20-year-old son, who had had no previous criminal record, was being held at the police station.
“It’s that call that no mother, especially a black woman in America, wants to get,” Porter recalled on an interview on WNHH FM’s “Criminal Justice Insider” program. “I was devastated. But I was also rooted and grounded in my relationship with God.”
Ten years after the experience, Porter now helps make laws governing when people get arrested and how the criminal justice system handles them, as a Democratic state representative from Newhallville’s 94th General Assembly District.