<p>“What rights were denied?” – My understanding is that it took hours before he was allowed to call an attorney. If I’m wrong, someone please correct me. </p>
<p>He was with a friend who called the NAACP who called an attorney. This all happened on the street before he was taken into the police station. That’s the version he told on CNN.</p>
<p>Well, then, there was absolutely no problem with this scenario. I feel very confident now of the way police treated this particular suspect and wouldn’t at all have an issue if they treated me that way too. </p>
<p>Are people really this naive or is it willful ignorance? </p>
<p>First, I have read the many responses and now that it has been said here the incident happened here in Beverly Hills. I know that brings up other issues. The myth: There are no minorities who live except for livein help. Wrong. I will say upfront that we don’t have welcome wagons. I would have difficulties naming more than oneor two neighbors. But we are an integrated community. One of our new neighbors’ dog got out. My daughter and her boyfriend caught him, returned him as I secured the gate. There are interracial couples, and the gentleman who lives on our street has a gorgeous garden. (I have seen him outside working…and I thanked him for making me day. And I am not saying…some of my best friends</p>
<p>We have an excellent police force. They are professionals. They do professional extras like visiting people to make sure that they are ok. I could go on and on…</p>
<p>@flossy - IDK what CNN said but that is not what is being reported by the LATimes:</p>
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<p><a href=“Beverly Hills police acknowledge 'breakdowns' in producer's arrest”>http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-0829-bh-producer-20140830-story.html</a></p>
<p>The BHPD knows that something(s) weren’t kosher…so to speak. And unlike the Ferguson PL who spenttwo weeks in silence/ The procedures will (I imagine) be examined. We are NOT part of the LAPD.</p>
<p>“Better than Ferguson PD” is the standard now?</p>
<p>If you’re in Beverly Hills, apparently. And look-they allow blacks to LIVE there! smdh. </p>
<p>I want to second hayden’s post 62. I delivered newspapers 24 years ago when my D was born and my wife stopped working/ At the same time I was working for the paper they also hired an AA to do the same job I did. We both drove small blue cars. After working there for several years he was asked to pick up a payment from a customer that was going to be put in an envelope and hidden in the bushes. He looked at our boss like he was nuts and said he could not do it. The boss said why the customer told us he was going to put the payment there and we should go get it. He told the boss since he had been working for the company he had been pulled over about 40 times and if he went into the bushes he was afraid he would get shot. I went to get the payment. I had never been pulled over once. I should also say that if anyone would have looked suspicious it would have been me. You see our job was to take over routes where the carrier had quit so we had to learn all new customers constantly. My vision is very poor so I would go up to the wrong house to see the house number and when I saw it was wrong go to the next house.</p>
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<p>This “vigilance” isn’t necessarily confined to known high crime areas. </p>
<p>One older AA college classmate who comes from a higher SES family in a well-off near-all White NYC suburb started getting profiled when he was an adolescent. When his parents gave him a BMW for a graduation present, he ended up getting stopped often by cops…including a few who were blunt about their feelings “He must have committed some crime/dealt drugs to afford such a nice car.” Keep in mind his parents are a medical doctor with a successful practice and a senior Fortune 500 exec who could easily afford to gift him that car and be full-pay parents. </p>
<p>And when he ended up at an H for PhD in chem in the early-mid '00s, I witnessed him getting stopped multiple times for ID by campus cops while he was giving me a tour of his part of campus.* This happened around the same there was outrage on campus because cops were called on a group of AA Harvard students for the “crime” of gathering on a quad to have a picnic even though they had every right to be there. Things got so bad that even the campus cops publicly admitted they had a serious problem and publicly vowed to work with student and admin liaisons to fix this serious profiling issue. </p>
<p>Also, I recalled a 20/20 episode on racial profiling where in a well-off NNJ I am familiar with, cops got called on the group of AA young men who were just minding their own business resting in a van while cameras were rolling. This town has an exceedingly low crime rate. </p>
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<li>I was never stopped when I wandered the H campus even late at night. Then again, I “look like I belong there”.<br></li>
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<p>I think we all expect the country to have grown in the last 60 years a lot more than it actually has. I’m not at all surprised we still have blatant and not so blatant racism in 2014, whether one thinks this is a case of it or not. Do we really get from black children are not allowed to go to school with white children to complete race blindness in one or two generations? We’re dreaming if we think we’ve achieved that.
When I saw the photo of Berk calmly sitting handcuffed on the sidewalk, casually but well dressed, Iphone5 at his side but out of reach, I honestly thought, “The police thought this guy just robbed a bank??” If I were to imagine a stereotype of a bank robber, this guy would certainly not fit the type. I don’t know what that says about profiling, but he just looked so unlikely to me. Especially in Los Angeles. He looked like he was going to dinner. So they say they had a witness ID him, but that’s all we know about that. I’m skeptical. Shoddy work, LA cops, whatever else it was. Five hours to identify someone so obviously not the person when they had video evidence and delay speaking to a lawyer is shameful. </p>
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<p>So they’re reviewing how to provide prompt access to a phone and lawyer, are they? Belk had his cell phone on his person. I can only infer that they refused to let him use it.</p>
<p>@OHMomof2 </p>
<p><a href=“http://newday.blogs.cnn.com/2014/08/28/black-tv-producer-is-mistaken-for-bank-robber-wrongly-arrested-before-emmys/”>http://newday.blogs.cnn.com/2014/08/28/black-tv-producer-is-mistaken-for-bank-robber-wrongly-arrested-before-emmys/</a></p>
<p>Here’s a link to the CNN report which is not really a report. it’s an interview where he explains exactly step-by-step what happened in his own words. Although, he does throw in a few what ifs and he is justifiably annoyed. I’m not sure what conflict with the Times you are seeing. The police messed up and apologized. The lawyer was called early in the process. I don’t know what the FaceBook delay thing means so I can’t comment on that. I don’t even see anywhere that he was actually arrested just that he was taken in for questioning after a witness ID in the street. Everyone agrees it was a mistake although racial or not is another story and that doesn’t mean racial profiling never happens, either.</p>
<p>Flossy- Thank you for posting that. It’s very interesting. What a gracious guy.
The only reason the lawyer was called was because Belk had a friend with him and he called out to him to call another friend who then called an attorney. He was never told he could call an attorney. And the report says he was there for 6 hours. This report also says he was arrested, in the headline and in the opening words.</p>
<p>Maybe he was never told he could call an attorney because everyone already knew he had called an attorney, though. I see he was arrested probably after the witness ID and before going to the police station. That’s a guess, of course. Six hours is a very long time.</p>
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<p>That in itself is a great irregularity if true. </p>
<p>Police officers are usually mandated by policy and good policework* to read the Miranda rights before any questioning. Some of those rights include the right to remain silent and to have an attorney be present during questioning. </p>
<p>Also, if a suspect invokes their right to call a lawyer, the police must allow him/her to do so within a reasonable period of time. 6 hours is not usually considered as such by most reasonable people. </p>
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<li>Failure to read Miranda rights has factored into critical prosecution evidence or even their entire case getting tossed out by judges because the evidence/case was considered “too contaminated” by poor police/prosecution procedures and disregard for the civil liberties/rights of the suspect which ran afoul of the law/past court rulings.<br></li>
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<p>Cobrat, the lawyer was called when Belk was still sitting on the curb in hour one. When the lawyer showed up or if he was allowed in the room we still don’t know. What is the delay mentioned on Facebook? And, yeah not reading him his rights is going to hurt the police and the prosecution is he’s guilty so what besides a mistake could motivate that? They did manage to catch the right girl bank robber but her partner got away.</p>
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<p>Sorry, that’s not the way it works. Cops don’t get to decide not to provide a constitutional right based on what “everyone knew.” </p>
<p>LasMa, it’s pretty hard to argue that you were denied the right to call an attorney if you called an attorney. Geez. All of this happened out on the street. He’s not saying that, btw. What he said was, “What if my friend wasn’t there?” Well, nobody knows.</p>
<p>Really? You have no idea what might have happened if his friend wasn’t there? </p>