In a now-viral video, a law enforcement officer tried to arrest Houston resident Clarence Evans in his own front yard after mistaking him for a different black man who allegedly had a warrant out for his arrest.
What We Know:
- Evans uploaded the video of the incident to social media on May 8, saying the officer had pulled up to his house as he was watching his kids play.
- The video ― which now has more than 1 million views on Facebook and 4.5 million views on Twitter ― shows a deputy, who is white, holding Evans’ arm behind his back and repeatedly calling him by a different name, saying there is a warrant out for his arrest in Louisiana.
“My name is not Quentin!” Evans insists. As the officer asks Evans to show him identification, Evans refuses.
- Another officer later pulls up in a car and gets the first officer’s phone out of his vehicle, and they show Evans a picture of the man they’re allegedly looking for.
- Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman told HuffPost the deputy had been responding to a call about a wanted fugitive out of Louisiana.
- Herman said that the deputy responded to a call for police service. When he did he saw a gentleman that fit the description, a black man with dreadlocks, so he approached. HE further exlaimed that ‘they’ were trying to make it appear as a case of police profiling and insisted that was totally ludicrous and not true. The constable said that the officers left after “the guy turned out to just be a gentleman in his front yard.”
“Doesn’t that look a lot like you?”
- Urban Newsroom was able to confirm that there is an ongoing criminal investigation into the incident — but the offending officer is not being investigated.
- Herman said that Evans “failed to cooperate” and “failed to identify himself to a police officer,” but didn’t think there would ultimately be charges against him.
According to available data provided by CNN, police interactions with black people in the U.S. are disproportionately likely to end in excessive force or death. One 2016 study found that black people were 2.8 times more likely than their white peers to be killed in encounters with police.
