99 percent of people arrested by Beverly Hills 'safe streets' police task force were Black: lawsuit

A new lawsuit alleges that 99 percent of people arrested by a Beverly Hills 'safe streets' police task force were Black.

The Guardian reports that civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump alleges that Black people accounted for 105 out of the 106 people arrested by the task force in the last year.

Additionally, the lawsuit alleges that the one non-Black person arrested was described as a "dark-skinned Latino person."

The lawsuit claims that the frequency of arrests among Black people is direct evidence of racial discrimination, and it uses body camera footage of specific arrests as evidence.

"The suit also cited a 2 October 2020 incident when the unit stopped Salehe Bembury, who was then vice-president of men's footwear at Versace and was holding a Versace shopping bag," writes the Guardian. "Body camera footage from that incident shows officers followed him and stopped him for jaywalking, with one saying, 'How come you did that? You didn't want to wait for the light?' The officers immediately asked for his ID, asked if he had weapons on him and then proceeded to pat him down and search him."

Bembury would then complain to the officers that he personally designed the shoes in the bag that they were searching for potential contraband.

Read more about the lawsuit here.