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A black real estate agent was showing a house to his client when police surrounded the house with guns.
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Police told the real estate agent that a neighbor called because they thought they were breaking into the house.
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The real estate agent and this client told local media that they believed they had been subjected to racial profiling.
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A black estate agent in Wyoming, Michigan was showing a property to a client last weekend when police arrived and handcuffed them.
Eric Brown was showing the house to his client, Roy Thorne, and Thorne’s 15-year-old son, all black, on Sunday afternoon when police surrounded the house, guns, and ordered them out, The Washington Post reported. The entire group was handcuffed and placed in separate vehicles.
Police told them the house had been broken into weeks earlier and a neighbor called to say it was happening again. They said the neighbor believed she recognized their car as the same black Mercedes used by the person who had broken into.
When police arrived, the cars outside the house were a Chevrolet and a Hyundai, according to The Post.
Once Brown was handcuffed, he was able to show police his real estate agent credentials and explain why they were at the house. After clarifying the situation, the police quickly released them and apologized.
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But Brown and Thorne told local news outlet WOOD-TV that they felt they were victims of racial profiling.
“The level of the response and the aggressiveness of the response was definitely a throwback, it really set me back,” Brown said.
He told the Post he thought, “We’re going to die today.”
Thorne said he was worried about his son and that police have apologized on several occasions but “the damage is done”.
“My son was a little confused, he hasn’t seen anything like it… he’s not going to forget it,” Thorne told WOOD-TV.
The Wyoming Police Department said officers’ response was formal and there was no “racial element.”
The dashboard and body camera images broadcast by the Wyoming Department of Public Safety to WOOD-TV showed how the incident unfolded.
“While it is unfortunate that innocent people were handcuffed, our officers reacted reasonably and in accordance with departmental policy based on the information they had at the time,” WDPS said.
But Brown said he now felt nervous about how to protect himself while doing his job.
“I feel quite anxious, or nervous or maybe even a little scared of what I’m doing to protect myself if I’m going to show a house and the authorities are just called on a whim like that,” he said. he told WOOD-TV. “Am I just automatically the criminal? Because that’s about how we were treated in this situation.”
Do you have a tip? Contact this reporter at [email protected].
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