A black man was wrongly handcuffed at a Virginia mall. The police apologized for accusing him of being someone he wasn’t.
What We Know:
- Jamar Mackey was at the Lynnhaven Mall in Virginia Beach on Saturday when an officer approached him at the food court, where he sat enjoying food with his family, and handcuffed him, bystander video posted to Facebook showed. Although he denied involvement in the theft, officers escorted Mackey out of the mall in handcuffs, only to release him after realizing he was the wrong person.
- In a video shared by Shantel Covil, Mackey’s fiancée, on Facebook, police handcuffed the father in front of his 13-year-old son and newborn child because they were looking for a credit card thief who was allegedly Black with locs, like Mackey. The police officers paraded Mackey through the crowd handcuffed, and just minutes after coming outside, they realized the real culprit had already been apprehended.
- Mackey said it was “dehumanizing” to be detained that way, in an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America on Tuesday.”It’s just like … nothing has changed. How is everything still the same? How do you still racially profile a Black man with dreads that way in 2020? How do you do that? It’s still happening in this day to Black men,” Mackey told Good Morning America. “What if he had shot me in front of my son or Tased me in front of my son, like for no reason,” he added.
- According to Blavity, calls from the Virginia Beach NAACP to the Virginia Beach Police Chief remain unanswered as of Sunday evening. The NAACP will not rest until every Black citizen in Virginia Beach can shop, dine, and travel without being racially profiled by our city’s police officers,” the group added. Neudigate has since apologized for the officers not wearing masks during the situation and said police leaders were trying to understand what happened before handcuffing Mackey.
Neudigate told WTKR they are sorry that this happened to him and that this happened in a public venue in front of his children during the holidays.
