Being black in America continues to be a crimeless “crime.” A 12-year-old boy encountered police during his first day on the job.
Working as a paperboy for the Upper Arlington neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio, Uriah Sharp exited his mother’s van and proceeded to walk up to a few houses. One neighbor watched him and assumed he was delivering papers. However, she still called the police.
“I noticed they were walking up to houses with nothing in hand and one of them came back with something said the 911 caller according to WSXY-TV. “It seemed kind of suspicious.”
An officer was dispatched to the scene where they pulled the van over and the boy’s mother explained that he had delivered papers to the wrong home and was retrieving them.
Officers were able to verify the Sharp’s activity and left without incident. Angered, Brandie Sharp took to Facebook to share how her son had been treated.
“First day of paper route and we are pulled over by the police,” Sharp wrote. “Sad I can’t even teach my son the value of working without someone whispering and looking at us out the side of their eye perhaps because we DON’T ‘look like a person that belongs in their neighborhood.'” She said they would be changing their paper route to avoid the neighborhood.
Police released a statement about the issue to quell any racial bias.”We have seen some conversations on Facebook relative to a police response to a report of suspicious activity that turned out to be completely benign,” officials wrote.
Sadly this year we’ve seen multiple incidents on black people encountering police for crimeless “crimes.”
