Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Wrongly Arrested Black TV Actor-Producer Now Has Permanent Record on LA Sheriff Site

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Charles Belk was wrongly–and quite disgustingly– arrested last week in Beverly Hills. His crime? Walking while black. The BHPD saw Belk — a TV producer and actor — in Beverly Hills and decided he fit the description of a wanted bank robber. They arrested him. The story made headlines. Belk — who has an MBA from the University of Indiana and a certificate from the Harvard business program– thought when he was finally released that there would be no record of what happened. Wrong. There is indeed a permanent record now in the LA Sheriff Dept. website. I’ve just seen it, and anyone can access it.

Here’s what Belk has written on Facebook tonight:
This is really disappointing!

I discovered that I still have an Arrest Record although the Beverly Hills Police Department detective that signed off on the Detention Certificate looked me dead in my face when he handed it to me and said, this indicates that we did not arrest you.

I’m a fairly smart man and I thought that “Detention” was a little strange seeing that I had been finger printed and mug shots were taken and I saw them entering it all into their system. But, I also thought to myself (in the state of confusion that I was in at the time), hey, maybe they just going to erase all of this.

Then when someone recently showed me this Arrest Report on the Los Angeles Sherriff Department site I think I lost my breath for a second. I was in total disbelief. How could he present me with this detention certificate and make it seem like everything was ok.

I now have to go through the trouble of filing a form to have it expunged from my record, and, apparently it still goes into a federal database that will always come up anytime anyone runs a background check on me and include the Department of Justice reports.

I did absolutely nothing….NOTHING. And now I have a record in the federal data base! Just because I #fitthedescription.

I plan on trying to do something about it. And if you feel so incline to take a voice in this and think that either the Beverly Hills Police Department should figure out how to resolve this for me, completely, or that the department of justice should have an easy process for all innocent people to not have something like this in their file, please let them know and send them an email, today.

Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. He is also the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

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