A little more than a month after New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton was forced to apologize to James Blake for his officers' mistaken takedown of the former tennis professional for minding his own business on a crowded New York city sidewalk, another African-American sports star is claiming he was recently racially profiled by police officers.
Milwaukee Bucks forward John Henson says employees at Schwanke Kasten Jewelers in Whitefish Bay locked their front door when they saw Henson approach the store and then ran to the back to call police officers when Henson rang the door bell.
“They locked the door and told me to go away,” 6-foot, 11-inch baller wrote in an Instagram post Monday calling out the jeweler that's been around since 1899.
"After I rang the doorbell twice everyone went to the back ... This was followed by two police cars pulling up and parking across the street and watching me for 5 minutes," Henson explained in his lengthy post.
After being questioned by police officers about his parked Chevrolet, the cops informed the jewelry store employees that Henson was simply looking to buy a watch and they unlocked their doors to carry on with business as usual.
“This was one of the the most degrading and racially prejudice things I've ever experienced in life and wouldn’t wish this on anyone,” Henson wrote, clearly incensed by the incident.
The owner of Schwanke-Kasten Jewelry, Tom Dixon told the local paper that the Whitefish Bay Police Department had informed local business owners to be on alert, and defended the employees' actions as in response to the police department's warning.
Still, it seems as though Henson isn't buying the jeweler's excuse to profile potential customers: “You have no right to profile someone because of their race and nationality and this incident needs to be brought to light and I urge anyone who ever is thinking of shopping here reads this and doesn’t bring any business to this discriminatory place":
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