Nearly every person arrested this year by a Beverly Hills task force was black, according to a new class-action lawsuit led by a black couple who say their arrest was part of a campaign to arrest black people for trivial reasons at disproportionate rates.
Filed Monday by famed civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump and Bradley Gage, the complaint alleges that 105 of 106 people arrested between March 2020 and July 2021 by the city's 'safe streets task force' were black.
The one outlier, according to the complaint, was a dark-skinned Latino man 'who looked black.'
Those arrested by the Rodeo Drive Task force were scootering, roller skating, driving, jaywalking a few feet off the crosswalk and, in one case, holding a Versace bag.
Beverly Hills Police Chief Dominick Rivetti said the force was assembled to combat a rise in burglaries, shoplifting, 'street gambling, public intoxication, marijuana smoking and more,' and a 'significant increase in calls for service in our business community.'
He said in the statement that an 'unprecedented' 13 firearms were seized by the task force from people walking along the luxury store-lined shopping area.
Khalil White (far left) and Jasmine Williams (far right) are being represented by famed civil rights lawyer (center right) and Bradley Gage (center left) in their lawsuit against the city of Beverly Hills, Beverly Hills Police Department Chief Scott Dowling and two unnamed police officers
The couple spearheading the suit, Khalil White and Jasmine Williams of Philidelphia, were detained 'without any reasonable suspicion or probable cause' by police while they were riding a scooter while on vacation on September 7, according to the complaint
Gage said that the true impetus for the task force were in response to protests over the police killing of George Floyd and suspicion that money obtained through unemployment fraud was being used to make purchases at the ritzy stores, according to Yahoo! News.
'Gee, that's suspicious - black people shopping in Beverly Hills,' said Gage of the department's approach to combatting that suspected fraud.
The Beverly Hills police 'had made up their mind that this black man was going to jail because this is Operation Safe Streets,' said Crump, who represented the families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
The couple spearheading the suit, Khalil White and Jasmine Williams of Philidelphia, were vacationing in Beverly Hills last Fall. On September 7, they were detained 'without any reasonable suspicion or probable cause' by police while they were riding a scooter, according to the complaint.
When the they protested and ' the continuous racial profiling of people of color,' the complaint alleges, police 'decided to ratchet up their invocation of police powers,' and began 'questioning the as though they were suspects in a crime.'
White and Williams were asked to give police their driver's licenses so they could be run through a criminal database.
The Beverly Hills police 'had made up their mind that this Black man was going to jail because this is Operation Safe Streets,' said Benjamin Crump , who represented the families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor
The couple objected and reiterated that they hadn't committed a crime - then, they were 'handcuffed and placed under arrest on multiple fabricated charges.'
When Williams asked officers for her purse to retrieve the key to her hotel room while White was being handcuffed, the complaint said, she was pushed into a police car and handcuffed.
Ultimately, all charges against the pair - White was charged with resisting arrest and both were charged for falsely identifying themselves to police - were dropped after they being reviewed by prosecutors. White paid a $25,000 bond to get out of jail.
Rivetti said that officers had told the couple that it was illegal to ride a scooter on the sidewalk earlier that day and, in their second encounter with police, White and Williams provided officers with false information.
'That day was very terrifying,' Williams said at a press conference yesterday. 'I don't want this to keep happening to anyone. It's not right. I don't want this to happen to anyone - I want it to be prevented.'
The lawyers are seeking class-action status for the suit, although White and Williams are the only two named plaintiffs.
The other 104 unnamed individuals, Gage said, were amassed with the help of unidentified, retired Beverly Hills police officers who were outraged with the task force's behavior and spoke out about the racial breakdown of the group's arrests.
Specifically, the lawsuit names the City of Beverly Hills, Police Captain Scott Dowling and two sergeants who are only denoted with initials in court documents.
'Dowling directed his subordinates to seize, interrogate, use force, falsely arrest, and maliciously prosecute African Americans who traveled to Rodeo Drive,' the lawsuit states. His intended to to 'keep out African Americans, who were deemed criminals.'
The suit lists a number of apparently racially-motivated detainments and arrests carried out by the group, including that of then-vice president of Versace, Salehe Bembury, who was followed by police while carrying a Versace bag.
Body camera footage from the October of 2020 incident shows the offending unit approaching Bembury for jaywalking, with one officer commenting, 'How come you did that? You didn't want to wait for the light?'
Officers almost immediately asked for then vice-present of Versace Salehe Bembury's ID and whether he had weapons in his possession. They began searching his person while he iterates repeatedly that the he is complying and feels uncomfortable
'I literally designed the shoes that are in this bag, and I'm being... searched,' Bembury can be heard saying to officers on the body camera footage. When he took out his phone to record, one officer tried to discourage him, saying 'right now, you're being detained.'
The officers almost immediately asked for Bembury's ID and whether he had weapons in his possession. They began searching him person while he repeatedly tells the cop that the he is complying and feels uncomfortable.
'I literally designed the shoes that are in this bag, and I'm being... searched,' he can be heard saying to officers on the body camera footage. When he took out his phone to record, one officer tried to discourage him, saying 'right now, you're being detained.'
'I'm in Beverly Hills right now and I'm getting searched for shopping at the store I work for and just being black,' said Bembury in an Instagram video that he posted at that point in his interaction with police. He then asks if he's 'good to go.'
'You're making a completely different narrative,' one officer can be heard saying in the video.
This is one of many times that the Beverly Hills Police Department has been accused of racial profiling
This is not the first time the Beverly Hills Police Department has been accused of racial profiling. In 1995, six black people, five of whom were teenagers, sued the department in a similar class-action lawsuit, accusing the department of stopping and harassing Black people without 'reasonable suspicion.'
In 2000 a settlement was reached, which included the launch of the city's Human Relations Commission, which handles issues of racial profiling.
In June of 2015, officers in the department posted the video 'Yellow Fever with Soul,' which poked fun at blacks and Asian Americans, to Youtube. Comments were made in the video about slavery, and a Black man was featured with a chicken leg in hand.
In 2020, the department's previous Chief Sandra Spagnoli, retired in 2020 after she was accused in over a dozen lawsuits of making racist comments having sex with officers who were later promoted.
The creator of the film 'Yellow Fever' film, Stanley Shen, ultimately promoted to detective, chosen over a female officer married to a Black man, according to the complaint.
The city of Beverly Hills has not disputed the racial breakdown of the data included in the lawsuit. According to The Guardian, a spokesperson said that the force has been disbanded after 16 months in operation.
