“I had to put pen to paper this time,” says Marci Ien, co-host of CTV’s The Social and a career broadcaster, in an essay published this week in the Globe and Mail titled The double standard of driving while black – in Canada.

Ien felt compelled to publish the story after she was stopped by police while driving in her neighbourhood for the third time inside of eight months, receiving no tickets, only warnings.

“That I am an award-winning journalist didn’t matter. That I co-host a national television show didn’t matter. That I have lived in the neighbourhood for 13 years didn’t matter,” she says in the piece. “But being black mattered. Maybe the hooded parka I was wearing mattered, too. I was being stopped by a police officer in my driveway outside of my house in Toronto. I was at home. My safe place. And I was scared.”

Ien also opened up about the experience on The Social. “If this happens to me, who else is it happening to? And we know it does. That’s why I had to use my voice,” she says.

Watch the full clip below.