In a now-viral video, a law enforcement officer tried to arrest Houston resident Clarence Evans in his own front yard after mistaking him for a different black man who allegedly had a warrant out for his arrest.
Evans uploaded the video of the incident to social media on May 8, saying the officer had pulled up to his house as he was watching his kids play.
he video ― which now has more than 1 million views on Facebook and 4.5 million views on Twitter ― shows a deputy, who is white, holding Evans’ arm behind his back and repeatedly calling him by a different name, saying there is a warrant out for his arrest in Louisiana.
“For what?” Evans can be heard asking. “You don’t know my name, so how can you tell me I have a warrant in Louisiana?”
At one point, the officer calls him “Quentin.”
“My name is not Quentin!” Evans insists. As the officer asks Evans to show him identification, Evans refuses.
Watch:
Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman told HuffPost the deputy had been responding to a call about a wanted fugitive out of Louisiana.
“Our deputy responded, he saw a gentleman that fit the description, a black man with dreadlocks, so he approached,” Herman said, later noting: “This was a call for police service.”
“They’re trying to make it appear it’s a profiling case, that we’re profiling black people and all that, which is totally ludicrous and not true,” Herman added. He said the officers left after “the guy turned out to just be a gentleman in his front yard.”
Herman said there is an ongoing criminal investigation into the incident — later clarifying that it’s not the officer who is being investigated.
The constable said Evans had “failed to cooperate” and “failed to identify himself to a police officer,” but that he didn’t think there would ultimately be charges against him.
