Update: Tiburon’s Police Michael Cronin and the supervisor involved in this case have resigned from the force.)
Sherman R. Frederick
Marinscope
The Black Lives Matter debate swept over Tiburon last week. The uber-wealthy, mostly white, bayside town in Marin held a three-hour Zoom session on racism after it’s police confronted a black storekeeper after hours, demanding he prove he was the owner of his store.
Tiburon has hired an outside law firm to investigate how the department handled the matter.
It started at 1 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 21, when Yema Khalif and Hawi Awash were in their clothing store with a friend doing inventory.
A Tiburon police officer, seeing the lights on, came to the door. Khalif opened the door and the officer said: “Hey, guys. I’ve never seen you open this late. Are you restocking?”
Khalif: “No, just doing our thing.”
Officer: “What’s your thing?”
Khalif: “Is there a problem?”
Officer: “No sir, there’s no problem. I’ve never seen anyone in the store this late. I just wanted to check in and make sure everything is OK.”
Khalif: “There’s no problem.”
Officer: “Why are you here so late?”
Khalif: “It does not matter.”
Officer: “It does matter.” (After some back and forth the officer says) “Do one of you own the store?”
Khalif: “It does not matter. I’m not going to answer your question. If you have a problem, you tell me.”
Officer: “I have a problem with you being here so late and not telling me why.”
The encounter escalated on both sides and concluded when officers pressed Khalif to prove that it was his store by producing a key to open the front door. Khalif appears to start to do that when a bystander yelled to the officers “That’s his store.” To which the supervisor said:
“Thank you, that’s all I needed to know. We’re outta here.”
In an Instagram post entitled “Black Business owners targeted by police in our own store” Kahlif recounted his take on the encounter and the subsequent encounter when a police supervisor arrbyived on the scene. “(The) Supervisor and another cop – who had his hand on his gun, the way, showed up almost immediately. The supervisor came charged and did not come to deescalate anything.”
In the town meeting, Kahlif said: “There is a lot of things that have happened like that where I’ve had to prove my existence within a certain space in the Tiburon community. It’s always, ‘Why are you here?’ It’s always, ‘Prove yourself why you’re here.’ It’s always, ‘Show some ID.’ So that’s where I’m coming from.”
You can see Kahlif’s Instagram post here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CEKwyUrJIdl/
You can see the Tiburon body cam footage here: http://www.townoftiburon.org/CivicMedia?VID=TP20260-Body-Camera-1#player
At the conclusion of the town meeting, Tiburon Mayor Alice Fredericks called it “the start of a process” of addressing racism in the community.
A Black Lives Matter protest was held on Saturday. It was entitled “Stand Up Against Racial Profiling” It started at Reed School and ended at the Tiburon Police Station.
(Sherman R. Frederick can be reached at shermfrederick@gmail.com.)
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