Black teen was riding in the car with his white grandmother. Someone called police.
A black teenager riding home from church with two white women was ordered out of the car and held in the back of a police car in Wauwatosa, Wisc., on Sunday, according to police video.
Police said they had gotten a tip about a black man robbing two women, and thought the 18-year-old may have been the perpetrator, TMJ 4 reported. But when the officer spoke to one of the women in the car, she told a different story.
“This my grandson,” she says in the video. “We’re on our way back from church to my house.”
Now an attorney for the teen has demanded documents related to the stop, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. “After we take a look at whatever basis they have for stopping and harassing this family, we will be able to comment further,” attorney Joy Bertrand said, according to the paper.
Police said in a statement to WISN that a patrol officer was flagged down by a black couple, who told him about a robbery in a Lexus involving a black male, after which they pointed out the car to the officer.
The video shows an officer exiting his squad car with his gun unholstered and pointed down. Then the video shows police ordering the teen out of the stopped car and telling him to face away, put his hands up and walk backward toward police. The officer tells him to get on his knees and not to move.
An officer goes up to the car and asks, “Is everything okay?”
“This is my grandson!” a woman says.
“That’s your grandson?”
“Yes! We’re on our way back from church to my house.”
“Alright, that’s good,” the officer says, then begins telling her about the tip that led to the stop.
“Here’s the thing ... so some guy comes up to me in his car and says (there was) two black guys robbing a lady in this blue Lexus. And I said, ‘What? Where?’ and he’s like, ‘He’s robbing them, he’s robbing them right now!’ And I’m like which blue Lexus?’
The officer says the man told him it was the car at the light, and the officer told the man to “stay here or follow me” while he performed the stop.
“This is my best friend, I’ve known him since he was a baby,” the woman says.
“Alright, and I’m certainly glad that that guy was mistaken or wanted to put me on a ruse or something that was not actually occurring … so I apologize for that guy not knowing what he was talking about,” the officer says.
“I’m sure he saw two old white ladies in a car with a black kid and made some assumptions,” she replies.
“Well he was black as well, so I don’t know …” the officer says.
“Oh my God! So then it’s even worse!” the woman says.
In another video, a different officer takes down the teen’s name and details after telling him the incident sounded like “a really big misunderstanding.”
The teen was detained for a total of six minutes before being released, police said in a statement to WISN. “The original citizen who reported this to police did not stay in the area, as requested by officers, and has yet to be located to get a formal statement,” police said, according to the station.
“The officers acted professional during the entire interaction,” police captain Brian Zalewski said, according to the Journal-Sentinel.
A witness to the scene said he saw the teen shaking and crying, and said police “shouldn’t have went that far,” according to CBS 58.