A Tennessee black woman wants answers after police handcuffed her on her porch despite being given information for a white female.
News Channel 3 in Memphis reports that the incident happened after her neighbor, Johnny Byrd who is white, attempted to defend his children with a shovel and BB gun from a pack of raccoons that were attacking their dog during a nightly walk.
A second unidentified neighbor misunderstood what was happening, believed they were witnessing a domestic violence incident and called authorities saying a lady holding a gun on a man. When police showed up, they went to the wrong house and handcuffed Tawanda Cason, who is black, instead.
“There were two raccoons in the side yard between our house and my neighbor’s house, and my dog was attacked,” Byrd said
When the kids started screaming, he grabbed a shovel and his wife’s BB gun to try and fight off the raccoon.
But, another neighbor saw the incident differently.
“He thought we were having a domestic violence issue, so he called police and said there was a lady holding a gun on a man with a shovel in his cove,” Byrd said.
Tawanda Cason described what happened next at her home across the street.
“Somebody was hollering, ‘Open the front door!’ so I went to the front door, opened it and I saw all these flashlights and people outside my door,” Cason said.
“I walked on the porch and immediately was handcuffed,” Cason said. “I just kept telling him it’s the wrong house. It’s the wrong house. He said, ‘No, we confirmed.'”
After 15 minutes they let her go and apologized, she said. But she can’t help but wonder how and why this happened.
“If you’re searching for a white female, I’m clearly not her. I was immediately handcuffed.” Cason said. “There’s nothing they can do, because it’s always going to be with me and my children.”
“This lady is 5-foot-3, African-American. She’s no match at all,” Byrd said. “Traumatizing her family for no reason even over something that wasn’t real seems ridiculous.”
To see the full news story, courtesy of WREG 3 Memphis, flip the page.