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In the most recent issue of Uptown, Empire star Taraji P. Henson said her son was on the receiving end of police discrimination. It was so bad that she had him change schools:
“My child has been racially profiled. He was in Glendale, Calif., and did exactly everything the cops told him to do, including letting them illegally search his car,” she explained to the magazine. “It was bogus because they didn’t give him the ticket for what he was pulled over for.”
“Then he’s at University of Southern California, the school that I was going to transfer him to, when police stopped him for having his hands in his pockets,” she continued. “So guess where he’s going? Howard University. I’m not paying $50K so I can’t sleep at night wondering, ‘Is this the night my son is getting racially profiled on campus?'”
Because they didn’t want their good name sullied, the Glendale PD released the dashcam footage of the incident:
Watch the dash cam video of the full stop … the officer pulls over Marcel for allegedly failing to yield at a crosswalk. When the officer asks Marcel if he has anything illegal in the car … he confesses he has some marijuana. The officer actually thanked him for being honest.
No footage of the second incident has been released. Despite this, and in light of the footage released, Henson issued a public apology:
Taraji now says, “I would like to publicly apologize to the officer and the Glendale Police Department. A mother’s job is not easy and neither is a police officer’s.”
She adds, “Sometimes as humans WE overreact without gathering all of the facts. As a mother in this case I overreacted and for that I apologize.”
Taraji ends by saying, “Thank you to that officer for being kind to my son.”
I’ve taken away two things from all this:
- Dashcam footage is good for everyone, as it can give a clearer picture of questionable incidents like this.
- If if that last part of the block quote is correct, one can only imagine what Marcel’s punishment might entail.
(via TMZ)