A video posted to Clarence Evans’ Facebook page went viral this past week. The video shows Evans being harassed and asked to put his hands behind his back by a Houston, Texas, police officer—in front of his home, while a woman records the action. Why is the Houston police officer attempting to arrest Evans? According to the officer he wants “Quentin” to put his hands behind his back because he has an outstanding warrant in Louisiana. There are a couple of glaring issues here. One, Clarence’s name isn’t Quentin, and two, he doesn’t live in or have anything to do with the state of Louisiana. According to Evans’ Facebook post:
I’ve always been the one to say all cops aren’t bad but this racist mf just proved me wrong. I’m outside with my son and daughter watching them play when this racist ass constable from precinct 4 pulls up in front of my house and tells me someone called in about my dog being stolen.
Evans tells the officer, identified by Houston Fox 26 as “Deputy Lindley,” that this is “impossible,” because he has his dog’s papers and the dog has a chip implanted to prove ownership. The officer then asked Evans for his ID, to which Evans says “no thank you.” Evans is well within his rights, as police officers can only expect you to give them identifying information if you have been arrested. In fact, if you are “detained,” or a”witness” in a crime investigation in Texas, you do not need to provide identification. It IS a crime to give a false identity to an officer.
At this point, Lindley begins asking Evans to turn around so that he can handcuff him. According to Evans, the officer calls him “Reg” at this point. Again, this is also not Evans’s name. Houston Police Union President Joe Gamaldi told Houston’s Fox26 news,"That officer very much thought he had the right person and this person just didn't want to go to jail.”
One of those things is right: Evans didn’t want to go to jail for a warrant on some random dude in another state. He didn’t have the right person. He didn’t even have the right demographic, it seems, because according to Evans, when a second officer showed up and they finally showed him the picture of the man they had a warrant out for, it turns out he didn’t look anything like the man.
Then once his partner pulls up he shows me a picture of a black man in his 50s with dreds. So clearly this mf just saw a black man with dreds and think we all look alike.
The video picks up after the initial interaction, when Deputy Lindley is already attempting to handle Evans, and Lindley starts bringing up this warrant that he clearly hadn’t mentioned before. “He don’t even know my name and telling me I have a warrant?”
Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman has defended the officer’s actions by saying that Evans was an “uncooperative, vulgar-mouth citizen.” That’s quite a thing to say when you watch the video. One of the two men in the video has a gun and other people with guns show up, while the other man is black, in America, in his front yard. Evans has explained that if Deputy Lindley had just been forthright that he had a warrant for some guy named Quentin out of Louisiana, Evans would have shown him his ID; but that was not how Lindley went about this.
After the second officer arrives and both officers agree that this is not the black guy with dreads they are looking for, the officers begin to attempt to “clear things up.” Evans is furious at this point, telling news outlets that his 4-year-old is watching his father being treated like a criminal by a police officer. Asked by the officers what they can do, Evans tells them to “get the fuck off my lawn.”