There’s a strange trend going on where white people are calling the police on Black people for doing normal everyday activities. The latest involves the police being called on a Black family for delivering newspapers.
Last Friday, Brandi Sharp was delivering newspapers with her two sons, 11-year-old Uriah and 17-year-old Mycah, in the Upper Arlington neighborhood of Columbus. When Uriah, mistakenly delivered a newspaper to the wrong house she sent him back to retrieve it, that’s when they were stopped by police who asked them what they were doing. “I showed him the thing for the Dispatch, The Bag, the midday week paper that we get, and he said, ‘Oh, really?’ And by that time I was kind of like, ‘OK, why are you questioning me about this?'” Sharp told ABC 6.
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According to reports, someone called the police on the family. “It looked like at first they were delivering newspapers or something, but I noticed they were walking up to the houses with nothing in hand and one of them came back with something,” said the caller to Upper Arlington Police. “I mean, I don’t want to say something was going on, but it just…but it just seemed kind of suspicious,” said the caller from the 911.
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Sharp was so enraged by the incident she took to social media to express her thoughts. “Something as simple as delivering papers and it turns out to be I have to be racially profiled?” she said.
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Police say when they arrived at the scene it was “very quickly determined very quickly that these individuals were delivering the newspaper.” However, the police claim race had nothing to do with the incident. While Uriah will continue to help out his mom, he says the police getting involved made him uncomfortable.
