Two Employees Of Uptown Restaurant Say Police Racially Profiled Them

CHARLOTTE, NC.– Two employees of a popular Uptown restaurant say police racially profiled them after mistaking them for robbery suspects.

Brenton Jenkins and Paul Booker tell WCCB they felt like their lives were in danger early Sunday morning.

The chef and executive chef of Fitzgerald’s in uptown were doing inventory around three in the morning, after working at the South End Grilled Cheese Festival. They heard a loud boom in the back of the restaurant.

Surveillance video shows CMPD officers with flashlights and guns drawn. Officers were responding after a security guard reported a breaking and entering.

“So immediately we already had our hands up. Like what’s going on, we work here. They’re like no you don’t, come out of the building,” says Jenkins.

Moments later, you see officers yanking Jenkins and Booker out the door and immediately put the Fitzgerald’s employees in handcuffs.

“I feel like we were judged by the color of our skin and once they heard it was a robbery, they wanted us to be robbing the place.”

The men say they also showed the officers their keys to the restaurant, and repeatedly explained they worked there. Regardless, Jenkins and Booker say they were handcuffed for about an hour.

CMPD spokesperson Rob Tufano says the officers followed protocol.

“When you have security calling for a breaking and entering in progress, officers have to respond, they have to investigate and they have to follow the letter or policy and that’s exactly what the officers did,” says Tufano.

CMPD released a statement on Twitter saying in part, the men did not immediately follow officers’ verbal commands to come outside the restaurant. The department said after completing a field investigation and verifying the two men worked at Fitzgerald’s, they were released from handcuffs.

Booker says they shouldn’t have been treated like criminals.

“That’s just wrong. I don’t care how they split it, that’s just wrong. If that’s protocol, change the protocol. We need to sit down together and talk this out and get something done,” says Booker.