Vegas police arrest Black man on warrant for white man with same name

Are you stupid? Are you racist? Are you both?

Source: William Nation / Getty

If police officers were even half-way competent, then a lot of innocent people wouldn’t have to suffer the consequences. That said, you really can’t even give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to stories like this because it’s SUCH an easy thing to avoid. We just gotta assume that they are doing this stuff on purpose.

According to a story over on NewsOne, a 23-year-old Black man in Las Vegas named Shane Lee Brown was arrested by Henderson County Police on a bench warrant that was not meant for him. The man that police were looking for was also named Shane Brown except he is a 49-year-old white man with a “white bushy beard and blue eyes”. It literally would have taken 60 seconds to cross-reference this information before hauling someone off to jail.

When it was all said and done, Shane Lee Brown spent 6 days behind bars until he appeared in front of a judge and his photograph and the offender’s photograph were displayed for all to see. Brown is now suing Metropolitan Police Department, Henderson Police Department, the city of Henderson, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, and Henderson Police Department Chief Thedrick Andres for about $1 million.

We hope he takes much more than that.