Antone Austin recently spoke out on his racial profiling lawsuit against the LAPD, as body-cam footage became available of him simply taking out the trash prior to his arrest.
The body-cam footage of the May 2019 incident was recently released despite the City of Los Angeles fighting to have the footage suppressed saying it would have a chilling effect on police investigations down the road, and it was against policy.
The reality is the video shows how inept the two police officers that approached Austin were, and how they racially profiled Austin because he is a black man.
One officer literally verbalized, “We don’t know who we are looking for” while they were in the process of arresting Austin.
The video shows the two officers in their patrol car sizing Austin up before they approach him and saying he’s “probably” the guy that they are looking for.
The officers were responding to a domestic violence call from Austin’s neighbor on her ex-boyfriend, but the neighbor didn’t give dispatch a description of her ex-boyfriend.
Where they do that at?… How do you look for someone you don’t have a description of?… Hence racial profiling.
Austin was asked what he thought of the video after he got to see it all play out, and he admitted that at first, he thought this happened because he’s a black man, but he didn’t want to believe people’s thinking was on that low of a scale.
In your mind, you want to say to yourself… aah!… You know the first thing you know, this happened because I’m black.
And then you don’t want to be that petty, you don’t want to be that small, you don’t want to believe people’s thinking was on that that that… that low of a scale, right!
And then when you watch the footage, and you hear the guy in the car… You know like, the girl in the 911 call told them to go to a restaurant that was three blocks away from my house.
It’s crazy that they can just convict you when they are supposed to be there as a mediator, there to serve, protect, find out what’s going on.
You know, umm!… But, they in their minds are the judge and the jury, and they are going to convict you on the spot based on what you look like.
It’s really eye-opening… you know!… It changed the way I look at a lot of things.
Austin’s attorney stated this is a clear case of racial profiling.
Austin fought for the release of the body cam footage, and he is relieved that the public gets to witness what he went through.
See the body-cam footage below:
Hopefully, Antone Austin and his girlfriend win their lawsuit and the LAPD is held accountable.
Your thoughts…
