Black filmmaker called 911 to report a burglary – but says police showed up and tased him instead

A Black filmmaker and actor called police claiming a burglar broke into this Hollywood apartment. But when the police arrived, he says he was treated as a suspect, The Los Angeles Times reported.

Damien Smith was in the midst of making a documentary that focuses on police brutality, and he says he was a victim of the same treatment when police arrived at his home that night and ended up tasing him.

Now he's suing the Los Angeles Police Department.

“I’m still in shock and awe of how this transpired,” Smith said. “I’m in such fear of calling the police. … Look what happened to me.”

Police waited more than a year to open an investigation into the case and have not released any statements, the Times reported. The entire account of Smith's story comes from himself and a neighbor who witnessed the incident.

Smith said he confronted a burglar as he was trying to leave the apartment when Smith arrived. Smith said he grabbed a knife and the burglar's hand, and eventually subdued him and held him until police arrived. When officers got to the scene, Smith was standing over the burglar, still holding the knife, which he dropped when officers told him to put it down.

As officers trained their guns on Smith, neighbors frantically tried to explain that he was the resident, not the suspect.

“Police were there. I was screaming at the top of my lungs,” neighbor Tiffany Wysinger said. “I see them with something drawn, and I scream at the top of my lungs, ‘He’s the resident!’"

“I live here. I called 911,” Smith told police as they were commanding him to get on the ground, according to the lawsuit.

Nevertheless, according to Smith, an officer fired a taser, causing Smith to crumple to the ground.

Officers then handcuffed him and put him in the back of their police car.

“I’m like, ‘I’m the one who called you.’ They’re like, ‘Shut up,’ speaking to me very disrespectfully,” Smith said.

When officers finally confirmed his identify and released him from custody, “No one apologized,” Smith said.

Ed Obayashi, an expert who investigates use of force incidents for California law enforcement departments, says it will be hard to determine what happened until body cam footage is released.

“If the officers can’t articulate that there was an immediate threat to their safety or others, then it’s a bad tasing — period,” Obayashi said. “But on the other hand, if the guy got belligerent or came at the officers and officers reasonably believed this guy was going to fight or had something in his hands ... then it would be a justifiable use of force.”

But Smith thinks race was the determining factor.

“I believe there was a racial component to this whole situation, how the police treated me, how everything was executed,” he said. “I don’t think it would have went down in this manner if I was not African American.”

Read the full report at The Los Angeles Times.