kor😷🧼🕊️

He stepped outside a restaurant in Beverly Hills to put money in a parking meter. Six hours later Charles Belk was still in a cell, barefoot, having been handcuffed on the pavement in front of a crowd in his own neighbourhood. He is a film producer. He had done nothing. 22nd August 2014, during the Emmy weekend. Belk, 51, had been at a business dinner. He walked out to feed the meter. Police surrounded him, handcuffed him, took his shoes, and sat him on the kerb in front of the restaurant while people filmed on their phones. A bank had been robbed nearby. The description police were working from was a tall, bald Black man. Belk is tall and bald. That was the match. That was the entirety of the match. He was held for about six hours on suspicion of robbery before surveillance footage was reviewed and he was released without charge. His car was impounded. He had to post bail to get out, and it took days to get that back. He wrote about it afterwards, and the paragraph people quote is the one where he lists what he was doing: a business dinner, a parking meter, a pair of shoes taken off him on a public street. Here is the part worth your attention. Charles Belk produced films. He had a degree in engineering and an MBA. He was in a wealthy part of Los Angeles in a suit on a Friday night. None of that is a defence against a description that says tall, bald, Black, because that description is not a description. It is a category, and there were about a hundred thousand men in that county who fit it. Six hours, barefoot, for a parking meter.