Jessie C. Love

He stepped outside a restaurant in Beverly Hills to put money in a parking meter. Six hours later Charles Belk was still in a cell, barefoot, having been handcuffed on the pavement in front of a crowd in his own neighbourhood. He is a film producer. He had done nothing. 22nd August 2014, during the Emmy weekend. Belk, 51, had been at a business dinner. He walked out to feed the meter. Police surrounded him, handcuffed him, took his shoes, and sat him on the kerb in front of the restaurant while people filmed on their phones. A bank had been robbed nearby. The description police were working from was a tall, bald Black man. Belk is tall and bald. That was the match. That was the entirety of the match. He was held for about six hours on suspicion of robbery before surveillance footage was reviewed and he was released without charge. His car was impounded. He had to post bail to get out, and it took days to get that back. He wrote about it afterwards, and the paragraph people quote is the one where he lists what he was doing: a business dinner, a parking meter, a pair of shoes taken off him on a public street. Here is the part worth your attention. Charles Belk produced films. He had a degree in engineering and an MBA. He was in a wealthy part of Los Angeles in a suit on a Friday night. None of that is a defence against a description that says tall, bald, Black, because that description is not a description. It is a category, and there were about a hundred thousand men in that county who fit it. Six hours, barefoot, for a parking meter.

He missed the school bus. So Brennan Walker, fourteen, walked the route from memory and got lost, and knocked on a door to ask for directions. A woman screamed. Her husband came down the stairs with a sh0tgun. Rochester Hills, Michigan. The morning of 12 April 2018. His phone was dead. He had never had to walk it before. He knocked. Through the glass he tried to explain he had missed the bus and needed to know which way the school was. The woman inside started shouting that he was trying to break in. Her husband, Jeffrey Zeigler, a retired firefighter, came downstairs with a sh0tgun. Brennan ran. Zeigler came out onto the porch and fired at the back of a running fourteen-year-old. The shot missed. It is on the house's own doorbell camera, which is why we are not relying on anybody's memory. Brennan kept running until he found someone to call his mother. Zeigler was charged and convicted of assault with intent to do great bodily harm and a firearm offence, and sentenced to four to ten years. Brennan's mother, Lisa Wright, said afterwards that she had taught him what to do if he got lost. Go to a house. Knock on a door. Ask an adult. Every parent teaches that. It is the single most basic instruction there is. He did it exactly right, and a man fired a shotgun at him for it. He was fourteen, and he was late for school. This is why in our book we confront the painful history too many people never hear. We must never forget these injustices Get yours: savvypurchase.samcart.com/pr…