Lawsuit Accuses Beverly Hills Police Task Force of Egregious Racial Profiling
A lawsuit accuses a Beverly Hills police task force of unjustly targeting Black civilians.
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According to a new lawsuit which alleges egregious racial profiling in Beverly Hills, nearly all the people arrested by a police task force over the past year were Black, reports The Guardian. The complaint alleges that out of 106 people arrested by a Beverly Hills police “safe streets” task force, 105 were Black and one was a dark-skinned Latino person. Between March 2020 and July 2021, the unit unjustly stopped and arrested Black civilians who were roller skating, scootering, driving and jaywalking a few feet outside the crosswalk.
The unit, also known as the Rodeo Drive taskforce, was set up last year in response to “a significant increase in calls for service in our business community,” according to the city, which is one of the richest municipalities in the US and less than 2 percent Black. The plaintiffs in the suit, which was filed as a class action, are Jasmine Williams and Khalil White, a couple on vacation in Beverly Hills last September who were detained by police “without any reasonable suspicion or probable cause”, lawyers wrote, saying officers demanded their IDs to run their names through a criminal database even though they hadn’t committed a crime. The couple “peacefully” objected to the officers “abusing their police powers” and were subsequently handcuffed and arrested on “multiple fabricated charges,” the complaint said, adding that prosecutors later dropped the charges.
