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“I knew once they circled the house they were preparing for a dead end,” father Roy Thorne told CNN’s Don Lemon on Friday. “And so my gut told me that we have to get out of here, we have to go where they can see that we are not a threat.”
A neighbor had called authorities, claiming that a suspect arrested on the property a week earlier had returned to the scene, according to the Wyoming, Michigan Department of Public Safety. But the caller was wrong: Realtor Eric Brown was giving Thorne and his son Samuel a tour of the house in the Wyoming community, just outside of Grand Rapids, after scheduling the visit online the day before.
All three were eventually released without incident – but not before Wyoming Police ordered them out of the house with their hands in the air and handcuffed them each, briefly placing Thorne and her 15-year-old son. in the back seats of separate patrol vehicles, according to images released by Wyoming Police.
“I was worried,” Thorne said, “but I was just more concerned with getting my son out of this situation and getting us all out of this.”
When asked if he felt they had been racially profiled, Brown said, “At that point, it certainly was.” He struggled to justify the level of force used, he said, describing it as a “tactical” response.
In a statement released Friday, the Wyoming Department of Public Safety said it had conducted an internal review and concluded that “race played no role in the treatment of individuals by our officers, and our officers responded. appropriately “.
“Although it is unfortunate that innocent people were handcuffed, our agents reacted reasonably and in accordance with departmental policy based on the information they had at the time,” the statement said.
The incident scared 15-year-old Samuel Thorne, who told Lemon he felt “the confusion, shock and fear … because I had no idea why they were all there at the time.”
“It went from ‘Daddy there are cops out there’ to ‘come out with your hands up’,” Samuel said. “It was kind of like, just zero to 100.”
Pictures released by police show how the incident unfolded
A neighbor called the county dispatch on the afternoon of August 1, reporting that a person arrested at the house on July 24 had returned in the same car, according to a schedule released by the Wyoming Department of Public Safety .
In the audio of the call broadcast by the Wyoming Police, the appellant is heard on the dispatch that a “young black man” had been arrested the previous week for “squatting” the house and that his car had been towed. (The police statement indicates that the individual was arrested for illegal entry.)
Police said it was a different caller from the original incident, but “the appellant was aware of the previous arrest and had seen the arrested person and his vehicle.” The owner had asked the appellant to watch the house, police said.
A few minutes later, an officer from Wyoming contacted the appellant to clarify that it was the same suspect and the same vehicle as in the previous incident. The caller confirmed that was the case, police said, “adding that two other men have come forward and the three have now entered the house.”
Dash camera footage in one of the police vehicles shows police arriving at the scene and ordering people inside the house to come out with their hands in the air. At least two officers are seen approaching the house with their weapons drawn.
The door opens and one of the men comes out with his hands raised, according to the pictures. All three leave the home one by one, following the orders of the officers, who tell them to approach with their hands in the air. The police make everyone turn around (Samuel Thorne’s face is blurry) and intertwine their fingers behind their backs before an officer handcuffs them.
Officers are heard in body camera footage explaining that the house had been broken into the previous week, acknowledging that it appeared to be a “misunderstanding”.
Brown is heard explaining to an agent that he is a real estate agent and he directs the agent to his license in his wallet. The agent takes Brown to the door, where the agent removes the handcuffs as the real estate agent explains how he planned the visit and entered the house.
Officers also remove Thorne and her son’s handcuffs after a few minutes, and they are heard apologizing to Brown, Thorne and Samuel.
“Don’t report that people are doing normal things”
According to the Wyoming Police statement, two officers unsheathed their guns during the incident, one moving around the perimeter of the home’s property and the other hiding near the front. .
“When responding to an ongoing reported home invasion with multiple people inside a home, this is standard protocol,” Wyoming Police said in its statement.
Police Chief Kimberly Koster reached out to Brown and offered to meet with the three of them to discuss the incident, Wyoming Police said.
Brown told CNN that a time had not been decided, but that they wanted to have this conversation with the chief in the presence of their own lawyer. He added that he thought it was “critical” that Samuel was there too.
“Clearly,” said Brown, “we want reforms and changes here.”
When asked if he had a message for the neighbor who called the police, Thorne told CNN: “We’re like you. We occupy the same space. We do the same things. We go to the same places. . “
“And if you see a crime, report a crime. But if you see people – black people, a minority – don’t report people are doing normal things,” Thorne said. “You do that, you don’t realize that you can change their life or have their life taken, just by making a phone call. In that case, it could have been three.”
“You could have changed my life, changed my son’s life,” he said.
CNN’s Aya Elamroussi contributed to this report.
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