WPRI — It was business as usual at the Garrahy Judicial Complex until Brooklyn Crockton was blocked from entering a courtroom. Crockton, a law student at Roger Williams University, said a sheriff pulled her out of line and began asking her questions. “He asked if I was the defendant,” Crockton recalled. “It kind of threw me off balance. I was aware that situations like this had occurred with other law students, but I just couldn’t believe in that moment that it was happening to me.” After Crockton, who’s Black, explained to the sheriff, who’s white, that she was there representing a client as part of Roger Williams University’s criminal defense clinic, he offered a quick apology. But it didn’t stop there. Crockton said the sheriff approached her several times after she’d entered the courtroom, adding that he kept speaking to her as if she’d never set foot in a courtroom before. “I was getting anxious each and every time because I really just wanted the interaction to be over,” she said. Crockton vented about her experience in a TikTok video that later went viral. “I have never been more embarrassed in my entire life,” Crockton said in the video. “I felt like crying in that moment.” “You hear about these stories all the time with Black attorneys, but when it happens to you, it is just so visceral that you don’t even know what to say,” she continued.