A Wyoming, Michigan police department has defended its officers’ actions after they drew guns on real estate agent Eric Brown, Roy Thorne, and Thorne’s 15-year-old son, Sammy. Brown was showing a home to Thorne on August 1, NBC News reported.
As Newsonyx reported, the police held the three at gunpoint after a neighbor in the predominantly white neighborhood mistook them for burglars. Brown and Thorne spoke with WOOD-TV, and the men described their terrifying ordeal.
Brown said that the two men and boy were on the second floor when Thorne noticed the police circling the house with their guns drawn. At least five police vehicles were deployed after a neighbor called to report that a squatter, who had previously been arrested, was back with two others. The neighbor apparently thought that Brown’s black Genesis looked like the squatter’s black Mercedes.
According to CNN, Thorne recognized the police positioning from his military training and immediately worried for the trio’s safety.
“I knew once they surrounded the home they were preparing for a standoff. And so my instincts told me we need to get out of here, we need to get to where they can see that we’re not a threat,” Thorne said.
“They didn’t come there to talk,” added Brown. “The way that they moved around the house, Roy with his military training recognized that posturing. It flipped from we’re showing a house to we need to make it out of here alive,” Brown said. “I trusted that we were in danger, very serious danger.”
The police told the three to exit the home in a single file line with their hands up. The police officers kept their guns pointed at the trio until each one was handcuffed. Only then was Brown able to identify himself to the officers as the real estate agent for the home.
“They keep their guns drawn on us until all of us were in cuffs,” said Thorne. “So, that was a little traumatizing I guess because under the current climate of things, you just don’t know what’s going to happen…That officer came back and apologized again, but at the same time, the damage is done. My son was a little disturbed, he hasn’t seen anything like that … he’s not going to forget this.”
The realtor said he explained that he was a real estate agent and that he used a key to get into the home, but not until all three were handcuffed.
“I went from being afraid for my life to shellshocked to ‘this is not right’ to now slightly angry,” he said. “I felt definitely guilty of breaking into this house. And I had the keys to it….The level of the response and the aggressiveness of the response was definitely a take back, it really threw me back,” Brown said.
The Wyoming Police Department said that the officers removed the handcuffs immediately after learning their mistake.
“On August 1, our officers responded to a 911 call from a neighbor reporting that a house was being broken into. Officers were aware that a previous burglary had occurred at this same address on July 24 and that a suspect was arrested and charged for unlawful entry during that incident. The caller indicated that the previously arrested suspect had returned and again entered the house. When the officers arrived, there were people inside of the residence in question. Officers asked the individuals to come out of the house and placed them in handcuffs per department protocol. After listening to the individuals’ explanation for why they were in the house, officers immediately removed the handcuffs. The Wyoming Department of Public Safety takes emergency calls such as this seriously and officers rely on their training and department policy in their response.”
The statement made no mention of the unnecessary aggressiveness used by the officers nor the number of police cars deployed over supposed squatters. Brown said that he might seek legal action.
Thorne had a message for the neighbor who called the police.
“If you see a crime, report a crime. But if you see people — Black people, any minority — don’t report people doing normal things,” Thorne said. “You do that, you don’t realize that you can change their life or have their life taken, just you making a phone call. In this instance, it could have been three. You could’ve changed my life, changed my son’s life.”
