Subscribe
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE

On Thanksgiving day, a Michigan man was stopped and questioned by police because “nervous” passersby called 911 to report that a Black man was “walking with his hands in his pockets.”

According to the video clip below (also recorded by the policeman), the man in question was detained for strolling through a neighborhood in Pontiac, MI, with his hands in his pockets. In the freezing cold weather.

Via Gawker:

“You were walking by, you were making people nervous,” the cop explains in the video, which was originally uploaded on Facebook. “They said you had your hands in your pockets.”

In the U.S., this type of questioning, universally known as a Terry stop, requires an officer to have reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed, usually obtained by observing the suspect engage in some sort of “unusual conduct.”

Here, the cop seems to suggest that the man’s cold hands met that standard.

“Wow, walking by, having your hands in your pockets makes people nervous to call the police, when it’s snowing outside?” the man asks. “There’s 10,000 people in Pontiac right now with their hands in their pockets, so how many—”

“You’re right,” the cop replies. “But we do have a lot of robberies, so just checking on you. You’re fine, you’re good.”

The man was eventually let go. Watch the f*ckery for yourself.

Photo: YouTube