A Black man repeatedly told police officers that he was not the man they were looking for. And he was right because the suspect was White.
According to Vice, in May 2019, an exchange between Antone Austin, a music producer known as Tone Stackz, and Los Angeles police officers was caught on body camera footage. Officers were responding to a domestic violence call when they approached Austin while he was taking his garbage out.
Apparently, police had no physical description of the suspect; therefore, they confronted the music producer because, as one cop stated, “I don’t know who I’m looking for yet.”
The cops have now been accused of racial profiling in a civil rights lawsuit as a result of the incident.
“It is racial profiling. They had no description of the suspect — a completely blank slate,” Faisal Gill, an attorney for Austin, told the Los Angeles Times. “They literally saw the first Black man, and they arrested him.”
It was Austin’s neighbor who called 911 about her ex-boyfriend. The actual suspect was a white man who escaped as officers arrested Austin.
“Yo, you’re looking for the people upstairs, bro,” Austin is heard telling officers. He’s repeatedly heard telling them they have the wrong person.
Furthermore, the caller told police that Austin wasn’t a perpetrator.
Officers weren’t certain they had the right person. At one point, one was heard responding “probably” when a co-worker asked him if Austin might be the “dude” they were looking for.
Eventually, officers tried to handcuff Austin after conversating about him being the right suspect. They put him against a wall as he screamed for help. One asked him, “What is your problem, dude?”
Austin’s girlfriend, Michelle Michlewicz, came outside to help him and intervene in the situation. She was wearing a bathrobe that at one point came undone in front of the officers.
Michlewicz demanded the officers tell her what was going on and why they were arresting her boyfriend. Officers pushed her to the ground. She can be heard screaming, “You have the wrong guy.”
The couple was arrested—both on felony charges of resisting arrest and assault on a police officer.
They posted bail and were released. Neither has been prosecuted, but charges haven’t been dropped.
The LA City Attorney’s Office tried to keep the body camera footage from the arrest private, claiming it would “interfere with the officers’ expectation of privacy” and risk both the cops and their families, KNBC reported.
A federal magistrate judge ordered the attorney’s office to make it public last week, the Los Angeles Times reported.
