I’m a white female with no arrest record. Let’s say I go into an upscale department store and use my debit card to buy a $350 bag, for which I show my I.D. to the cashier during the transaction. A block from the store I’m stopped by two police officers who have the unmitigated gall to ask me how I could afford an expensive bag like that. The officers ask to see my I.D., my debit card, and my receipt for the bag, all of which I show them (though I have no idea why they’re entitled to this!). Then, the two officers handcuff me and take me to jail.
I promise you, if these circumstances occur to me, I will sue the police department and the department store too. I don’t know why the officers stopped this kid, or what truly set off this unreasonable chain of circumstances. Assuming it happened the way this kid says it did, I can understand him thinking that his skin color must be the explanation. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. At this point, neither you nor I know.
Your example has nothing to do with ‘Tray-on’.
This is not even remotely similar to this guy’s situation.
Run around town and deliberately attempt to get hassled by the cops.
I’m wondering what was the cause the cops stopped him. Do they just pick and choose people at random and shake them down. Oh, forgot, it’s NYC.
At the point of being handcuffed and hauled off, I’d be raging mad. I’d sue too. And I’d make them pay.
I’d sue them too. The only time a government agent has any cause to ask you questions like that is if you are either a: crossing a border, where you might need to account for why you are bringing expensive items, or b: being investigated for some type of tax evasion/embezzlement/fraud. Neither of those are the case, so at the minimum, he was unlawfully detained, and perhaps because of a racial motivation.
Spot on.