When a black real estate agent let himself inside a nice house in a white neighborhood, prepared it for showing, and his black clients showed up a few minutes later, someone assumed they were intruders and called police.
The police didn’t ring the doorbell to find out who they were. Or make any effort to check them out. They surrounded the house with drawn guns, frog-marched them outside, and handcuffed them.
Including a 15-year-old kid.
They “waved to neighbors outside doing Sunday things — the guy who was mowing the lawn, the family next door who was hosting an outdoor gathering. They didn’t notice when the officers arrived.” And when they saw them, they thought the cops were pursuing a fugitive, who they feared might run into the house.
When the agent realized what was happening, “It flipped from we’re showing a house to we need to make it out of here alive,” he says. “I trusted that we were in danger, very serious danger.” They were.
A police spokesman defended the officers’ actions by claiming they acted “reasonably … based on the information available to them at the time.” Yes, the vacant home had been broken into before. But the cops did “zero due diligence,” the agent argues, and for that reason, he and his client are “speaking to a lawyer.”
It wouldn’t be racist if white people were treated exactly the same way, but they’re not. You don’t hear about this happening to white people (and if it did, nobody would buy or sell homes). It’s a product of systemic racism. And for that reason, the judge should let a lawsuit go forward, and a jury should make the police pay.
That’s the only way you’ll ever stop this mistreatment of black people. Imposing legal liability on police departments is how you get them to improve their hiring, training, and supervision of cops so they won’t keep making stupid, knee-jerk reactions when they see black people.
The caller isn’t totally innocent in this escapade, but having received the call, it was primarily the police officers’ responsibility to check it out instead of going off half-cocked. So it’s the cops who should be sued, and should compensate the innocent victims of this racism.
Read the story here.
I think this case goes nowhere unless the neighborhood was once redlined and that redline has never been modified and done away with. It is entirely possible that the same has happened to a white realtor showing a property to a white family looking for a home. Or at least the cops were called and a car shows up. The cops may or may not have been following policy. Maybe there were things that should have clued the cops to the fact this was a realtor showing the house to a potential buyer. Now if this was the 1970s and the property was redlined and this happened of course it would be absolutely about racism, and racism mandated by the state and or federal government. The draw backs of that policy persist today, and this is an example.
There may or may not be overt racism here, but I cannot find it in the facts presented in the story. Certainly there is a taint of racism but I doubt it can be proved. An attorney can bring a lawsuit against the town and the cops and hope the town fears bad publicity and pays. If the town or cops don’t pop then I have doubts a suit will be successful Of course it may come down to the town or cops insurance company and insurance companies don’t like to pay out or will only agree if it is much cheaper than defending the town and cops. Like $1.000 apiece.