A special “safe streets” police task force in Beverly Hills made 106 arrests over the past year and a half—and a new lawsuit claims that 105 of those people were Black. The other was a dark-skinned Latino person. The shocking allegation was included in a complaint filed Tuesday by civil-rights lawyer Benjamin Crump. The lawsuit accuses the unit, known as the Rodeo Drive task force, of blatant racial profiling during its 16 months of operation between March 2020 and July 2021. It includes one incident in October 2020 when the unit stopped Salehe Bembury, then vice president of men’s footwear at Versace, for jaywalking. Body-cam footage shows the cops searching Bembury, and him telling them: “What’s unfortunate is I literally designed the shoes that are in this bag, and I’m being… searched.” According to The Guardian, the city defended its task force in a statement, but did not dispute the arrest data in the lawsuit.
