A white man who said that police harassed him when he was out with his 5-year-old black "granddaughter" lied about the incident, according to the Daily News. Austin, Texas, police have released a surveillance video of the incident on Feb. 10, in which Scott Henson claims that he was cuffed and roughed up by police.
"He lied," Austin police Chief Art Acevedo told the Austin American-Statesman.
Police detained Henson and the black child (actually the daughter of his black goddaughter), Ty, after they received a report of a black girl being kidnapped by a white man.
A day after the incident, Henson wrote on his blog that "the officers got out with Tasers drawn demanding I raise my hands and step away from the child. I complied, and they roughly cuffed me, jerking my arms up behind me needlessly. Nine police cars plus the deputy constable all showing up to investigate the heinous crime of 'baby-sitting while white.'"
The video shows that the officers' Tasers never left their holsters. It also shows a simple arrest without any sign of the alleged rough treatment.
Acevedo slammed critics for embellishing certain aspects of the incident. "Had that been a real, legitimate kidnapping, and we would have responded with one or two officers in a nonchalant manner, the same exact critics that are criticizing us now would be saying that the Austin police department does not care about an African-American little girl being kidnapped," Acevedo told the American-Statesman.
Henson conceded that he was wrong about some aspects of the incident — "My mind filled in some pieces erroneously" — but says in his blog that he "correctly perceived that all of a sudden a LOT of cops were on us out of nowhere and if I'd made any sudden or untoward moves I'd be tased or worse."
We applaud the police chief for his department's response to the possible kidnapping of a black child. We wish other police departments across the country dedicated the same amount of resources to other cases of missing black children. Meanwhile, Henson may have accomplished exposing his blog to the masses for a few weeks, but now he's been exposed by surveillance video.
Read more at the Daily News.