Black television producer Charles Belk, arrested as he walked to his car and detained for hours.
The Beverly Hills Police Department apologized Aug. 26 and expressed “regret” after officers mistakenly detained a Black television producer four days earlier.
Charles Belk, 51, was arrested as he walked to his car while attending an event ahead of the Aug. 25 Emmy Awards, according to KTLA, a CW-affiliated Los Angeles station.
Belk, a Harvard alum and award-winning executive, was falsely identified as a suspect in a bank robbery because he “fit the description” given to police by a witness, according to TheL.A Times. Belk walked to his car to feed the parking meter, but was forced to sit on the curb handcuffed for nearly an hour and detained for a total of six hours. He was denied the right to a phone call, and police did not review footage of the robbery, a key reason why Belk believes he was detained for so long.
“I really do believe that the situation could have been cleared up within 10 minutes, much like it was cleared up six to 10 minutes after they reviewed the video upon my request,” Belk said Aug. 28 on Roland Martin’s News One show. Once the police reviewed the footage, they confirmed Belk was not the suspect in the tape.
“The Beverly Hill police department deeply regrets the inconvenience to Mr. Belk and has reached out to him to express those regrets and further explain those circumstances,” Beverly Hills police said in a statement. The department added that, in that situation, the officers “properly detained” Belk given the “totality of the circumstances,” the Times reported.
Black television producer Charles Belk. (Courtesy photo)
Even with the apology, Belk said he believes the experience will leave a long-lasting impact on him.
“There is no way I will get those six hours of my life back,” he told Martin. “There’s no way I’m going to get back that humiliation of sitting on the curb where people possibly seen me out there in handcuffs. I’m not going to get that back.”
The mistake by police comes at a time of heightened awareness of police brutality against African Americans, following the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Mo.; the Eric Garner chokehold death in New York earlier this summer; and the widely publicized pummeling of Marlene Pinnock by a California Highway Patrolman alongside a L.A. freeway. As in those cases, social media played a major role in Belk’s incident.
Belk posted a picture of him handcuffed on his Facebook account, which has been shared more than 38,000 times, according to a Los Angeles radio station.
Belk told Martin that he doesn’t intend to pursue the incident further, but wants his situation to be used as a learning lesson for the future.
“My goal however, is to build awareness to this and help or give voice to this, to all the Black males that are no longer here to tell their story,” Belk told Martin.
The person who robbed the Beverly Hills bank is still at large.
