Yes, another “fill-in-the-blank while Black” video is going viral. This time, it’s another “going to college while Black” incident. There’s plenty of those, to add to the list of “walking,” “studying,” “driving,” “shopping,” “eating,” “selling lemonade,” “BBQing,” “babysitting,” “swimming,” “working,” “AirBnBing,” “flying,” “performing,” “walking,” “jogging,” “sleeping,” and “Netflix & chilling” while Black experiences we continually have to endure.
Black Twitter reveals the video of a Black student being harassed by Oakland University campus police employed by Oakland University, a school in the Detroit/Auburn Hills area of Michigan.
In the video, the two officers involved can be heard accusing the student of using a fake ID to access a campus property. The video, which has reached half a million views, serves as a reminder (that we don’t need) that even on a college campus, or especially on a college campus, Black people, especially young brothers, are right to be weary of law enforcement.
There isn’t a year that goes by without such an incident of campus cops doing their best to impersonate city, state and county law enforcement by harassing and beating Black people. Just months ago in February, a Black student at Purdue was slammed into the ground and choked by a campus officer. In December 2019, four white male officers entered a University of Pennsylvania building and accosted two Black female UPenn students. According to the students who were harassed, though the building required UPenn IDs to enter, the officers asked to see their student IDs, then intimated that they must be fake.
The doubting of Black students’ university identification must be standard operating procedure of campus cops, as this practice has been reported by Black students from sea to shining sea.
And it was the same at Oakland University, a situation not as severe as some Black student encounters with overzealous campus police, but no less humiliating. And haunting.
“Imagine being racially profiled on campus of your school for 3 days in a row. That’s what happened to This young brother at Oakland University (Detroit/Auburn hills) after being accosted by the police & being forced to show his ID only to then be accused of it being a Fake ID,” tweeted the user who posted the video.
iHeart Radio reported the incident as follows:
In the video, one officer appears to grab the student as he adamantly repeats that he did nothing wrong. “Why are you grabbing him? Let him go,” a witness asks the officer multiple times. The campus police officer then claims the student had been hitting him in the arm “the entire time,” per the video. The student continues to plead with the officer to let go of his grip. “He’s grabbing me, putting his hands on me!” the student yells in the video. “I ain’t do nothing to him!” The campus police officers eventually allow the student to go into his backpack to get his ID. After the officers accuse the student of carrying a fake ID, they ask to see another form of identification. “Open up your wallet, let me see all of them,” the officer says, per the video. In response, the student pulls out a number of cards and throws them on the ground.
According to the report, the student who was wrongfully harassed and abused (yes, these officers put hands on brotherman) was able to walk away from the officers with no charges filed, which may read strange to folk who aren’t Black. I can hear them saying now, “Why’s it such a big deal that bro wasn’t charged if he didn’t do anything?” Because Brad, Blackfok get charged for doing nothing all the time.
And you already know, Black Twitter was none too happy with the actions of the officer.
Some people shared contact information to the Oakland University Dean of Students and student affairs office in hopes they will be bombarded by calls demanding the officers be fired or at least severely reprimanded. Another Twitter user shared his own experience similar to that of the video: “This happened to me once at Fordham Law. It was head of security who was a retired NYPD cop. He used to harass students coming in late. I wrote an email to the Dean of Students and got him fired.”
-theRoot