by Brooke Bosca | Top Right News
A star of the hit TV show Empire was caught in a bald-faced lie after dashcam video revealed her son was not racially profiled by L.A. County police, as she had claimed.
Taraji P. Henson, an Academy Award- and Emmy-nominated actress — who is scheduled to host Saturday Night Live on April 11 — told Uptown Magazine that her son was profiled for his race in Glendale, where he was stopped by police. She also told the magazine that police searched his car illegally.
But as dashcam video (below) released by the L.A. Times today clearly showed, Glendale police did no such thing — and in fact bent over backwards to be kind to a 20-year old Marcel Johnson, who had committed multiple infractions.
The footage from Oct. 18 shows the officer driving in traffic about 10:10 p.m. in Glendale when the actress’ son, who is in a Honda Civic ahead of him, drives through a lighted crosswalk as a person walks across. His race was not apparent in the video as he was driving.
Nor was any profiling. Lie #1 by Mom. Quite the contrary. When the cop smells mariijuana smoke, he respectfully asks Johnson if he has anything illegal. Johnson admits it.
He told the officer he has a state-issued medical marijuana license but couldn’t find it.
“I appreciate you being honest with me about the weed. I do appreciate that because I do smell weed,” the officer said.
Reports are Johnson has no such license. But back to the video. Henson’s son says he also has Ritalin but without a prescription as it belongs to a friend, which is illegal.
“You know you’re not supposed to have that, right?” the officer told him.
He then consented and allowed the officer to search his car. At that point, the officer was joined by two other officers and a police cadet.
Oops. So much for mama’s assertion that he gave no such consent. Lie #2. Cops found the pot (infraction), and also hashish oil (another infraction) and some drug paraphernalia.
So now we have two possible misdemeanors and a moving violation, and no racial profiling anywhere to be found.
So what did the evil racist officer do next? He cut the kid a big break:
The officer decided not to cite him for the original infraction because it would have a lasting effect on his driving record. Instead, he cited the young man for possessing marijuana.
“I am not going to give you a citation for running that yellow because that would actually put a moving violation on your driving license, and you are going to have to go to traffic school and all that stuff, so I am helping you by not giving you a violation on it. All I am going to do is take the weed from you,” he said.
“It felt like this was a little better than the other one,” he said. “I am giving this to you too because you smoked weed about two hours ago… and a warning if you have Ritalin on you and you’re not supposed to, don’t do it. That’s a big violation and I wouldn’t want to do that to you.”
The horror! According to his mommy Taraji P. Henson, you would have thought he burned a cross next to the car.
Another celebrity lie about police racism. Last September Django Unchained actress Daniele Watts lied about being racially profiled by the LAPD after being arrested by cops. Turns out she and her boyfriend were having sex in their car in a residential L.A. neighborhood with a car door open and children nearby.
Here’s the damning video of the nicest “racist” cop you’ll ever see…
Momma’s got a lot of ‘splainin’ to do. And she owes a big fat apology to the Glendale police.
UPDATE: She apologized. According to CNN:
Henson retracted her accusations Friday, and publicly apologized to the Glendale Police Department.
“A mother’s job is not easy and neither is a police officer’s,” she said in a post on Instagram. “Sometimes as humans we overreact without gathering all of the facts. As a mother in this case I overreacted and for that I apologize. Thank you to that officer for being kind to my son.”
