Police Called on Black Man Unlocking His Own Store

He was confronted by police — while opening the door at his own business, another disturbing example of racial profiling.

Transcript

00:00I felt some hurt. I felt some disrespect.

00:11I worked so hard to make this a reality, and I don't know, it just kind of sucked in the moment.

00:17We got so much media attention from the fact that we were charging $8 for lemonade. It brought

00:31out kind of the worst in people and their opinions. So the trolling actually began

00:36three days prior to the day of the incident.

00:38I'm on the phone with the security system, and pretty much the cops show up in the office

00:54against his car, his hands on his side, he's approaching me. And I asked him, I said to him,

01:04did we set off the alarm system? He said, somebody said that you're breaking in here.

01:07And I laughed and I said, that's funny. I said, this is actually my business.

01:20I think I can speak for anybody that's anybody of color specifically.

01:26You got to watch out for the police. I remember I had my first apartment in Harlem, New York,

01:31145th and Broadway. And I can't tell you, no exaggeration, how many times I got thrown

01:37against the wall for just walking to my apartment or from my apartment because I fit somebody's

01:42description. I believe had I not potentially been a business owner that day, that I definitely would

01:56have been on the ground in cuffs and potentially worse because of a phone call that somebody made

02:02without being certain of why they were calling in the first place.