Tag: mistaken identity

A black man headed home from church with his white grandmother was taken into custody by police in Wisconsin after two witnesses falsely reported that he was robbing her.

Attorney Joy Bertrand believes the 18-year-old man who was detained for roughly six minutes by police in Wauwatosa on Sunday was harassed, and the lawyer has requested all documents pertaining to the traffic stop, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

“After we take a look at whatever basis they have for stopping and harassing this family, we will be able to comment further,” Bertrand told the newspaper.

Police officials said in a statement that an officer was flagged down by a black couple who indicated that a robbery was either in progress or had just taken place. The suspect was a black male in the back seat of a blue Lexus, the couple reported, according to police.

“The citizen pointed out the car to the officer,” the statement continued. “A traffic stop was conducted. A non-approach traffic stop was made, in which the officer called the back seat passenger (who was said to be the robbery suspect by the citizen) back to officers instead of the officers approaching the car.”

The 18-year-old man — identified by the newspaper as Akil Carter — was then detained “based on reasonable suspicion” for approximately six minutes as an investigation ensued. Carter and the other occupants of the vehicle were then allowed to leave. The person who reported the allegations to police, however, did not stay in the area as requested by officers and has yet to be located to get a formal statement, police said.

“Officers removed their handgun from their holsters based on the original information of a possible violent crime (robbery) in progress, but kept their weapons pointed in a safe direction during the stop. The officers acted professionally during the entire interaction.”

But Carter was actually inside the car with his grandmother and her friend. They were on their way home from church at the time, Bertrand told the newspaper.

Carter’s grandmother can be heard in squad-car footage released by the department surmising exactly what she thought the man who reported the purported robbery had been thinking.

“I’m sure he saw two old white ladies in a car with a black kid and made some assumptions,” Carter’s grandmother told the officer, who apologized on behalf of the man.

Carter, who was released without incident, declined to comment to the Journal Sentinel. Bertrand said Carter is currently keeping “all options” on the table, including filing a lawsuit against the department.

“It seems to me that the police officers’ suspicion that this car was involved in a crime dissipates when his grandmother said, ‘He’s with me,’ if they had a suspicion to begin with,” Bertrand told The Post.

via: https://nypost.com/2018/09/06/black-teen-riding-with-white-grandma-gets-mistaken-as-robbery-suspect/