With police departments everywhere under intense scrutiny for racial profiling, after the recent string of questionable deaths of black men and children, a decorated black police officer spoke recently about his own experience of being profiled two years ago.
In an interview with PIX 11, now retired First Grade Detective Harold Thomas described the details of an attack on himself by his fellow New York City Police officers.
Mr. Thomas says that after a night out at La Marina Nightclub in Washington Heights with family and friends, he was approached by two officers as he made his way to his Cadillac Escalade. After being informed that his SUV fit the description of a vehicle in a shots fired call, Thomas says he showed the officers his badge and ID card as he told them who he was.
From there, things became worse when a third officer arrived on the scene. Thomas describes the encounter this way:
“The third cop comes up, and he’s a John Wayne he spins me around, slams my head on the hood of my car, which actually made a dent in the hood of my brand new car, he grabs me by the seat of my pants, threw me to the ground head first.”
In video footage, Thomas can be seen on the ground as multiple officers detain him. All the while his son is trying to tell the officers that Thomas is a police officer. A 28-year veteran of the New York Police Department to be exact.
After almost being knocked unconscious, Thomas was them arrested and charged with DWI, Resisting Arrest, and Assaulting a police officer. While the charges were immediately dismissed, the incident led to an internal investigation that lasted for at least a year. In the end, Thomas felt betrayed and retired. He describes it this way:
“Even though I did in my career more than all three of those cops put together, you know, they decided you know what, we gonna look out for the three white officers.”
While police overreach and abuse of power cross all racial lines, minorities know all too well the type of situation that Mr. Thomas went through. In fact, in an excellent piece on the story by Randa Morris at Addicting Info, complete with statistics, Thomas is quoted as saying,
“If they’ll do this to me, the average Joe doesn’t stand a chance.”
