Black Doctor Handcuffed by Miami Police While Helping Homeless (+Video)
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A black Miami doctor was handcuffed outside his home last week while on his way to hand out tents to the city’s homeless during the coronavirus outbreak.
The home security footage appeared to show a police sergeant handcuffing Dr. Armen Henderson, an internal medicine physician at the University of Miami Health System, as he was placing camping tents in his van. According to Henderson, the officer asked him what he was doing and if he was littering – Henderson told him he lived there.
The doctor denounced local authorities for alleged neglect of the homeless population, against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to Johns Hopkins University compiling data from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), among others; the USA has the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 infections cases with over 700,000 and 37,000 related deaths.
Incidents like these underscore why black communities often distrust law enforcement. Only about a third of blacks say local police, “do an excellent or good job in using the appropriate force on suspects,” according to a 2016 Pew Research Center study.
After fatal police shootings of black men such as Walter Scott and Alton Sterling, that were caught on camera, a study was released that accused some police of targeting minorities. The study found that black people were, in fact, more likely to be stopped by police.
In 2019, another study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences revealed black men were 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by the police.
