+
upworthy
Inclusivity

Beverly Hills police frisked Versace executive Salehe Bembury for holding one of his company's own bags

Beverly Hills police frisked Versace executive Salehe Bembury for holding one of his company's own bags
via Beverly Hills PD and Salehe Bembury / Instagram

Salehe Bembury was understandably outraged after being stopped and frisked by a Beverly Hills police officer on Thursday. He was apprehended by officers for jaywalking after shopping at the Versace store.

"I was in Beverly Hills. I went to go visit my buddy Amiri's store. And I was like, you know what, I'm never in Beverly Hills, let me stop by the Versace store. I grab a few things, and I'm walking back to my car," he said in a video he recorded after the incident.

"All of a sudden, this cop car pulls up on me on the corner, like with the quickness," he said.

Now, jaywalking is illegal in Beverly Hills, so the police weren't wrong to stop him. But the way they treat him during the interaction is why Bembury, and many others, believe he was the victim of racial profiling.


The incident was recorded on the police officer's bodycam and later released to the public.

The story is even more infuriating because Bembury is the Vice President of Sneakers and Men's Footwear at Versace.


In 2015, Kanye West came across Bembury's designs and hired him at Yeezy to handle Men's Footwear. In 2017, he was hired by Donatella Versace as the Head Designer of Sneakers for Versace and Versus.

"What did I do? I'm like a little startled right now," Bembury said at the beginning of the encounter. "Oh, I jaywalked I guess," he responded. Bembury told the police that he was staring at the GPS on his phone when he crossed a solid red-hand sign.

The officer then asked if he could search Bembury for any weapons and for his identification. Bembury agreed to the search and handed his over his wallet.

"What's unfortunate is I literally designed the shoes that are in this bag, and I'm getting fucking searched for it," Bembury was heard saying.

"I'm just walking down the street, this is a little ridiculous," Bembury said. "You hear it in my voice, I'm uncomfortable and nervous?"

VERSACE FOOTWEAR VP ACCUSES BEV HILLS COPS OF PROFILING For Shopping While Blackwww.youtube.com

The police officers frisked Bembury to see if he had any weapons, but they had little reason to be suspicious. According to LegalZoom, you can only be frisked under certain circumstances, which include:

Potential for an officer or bystanders to be injured

Officer is alone, without backup

Officers are outnumbered by a group that has been stopped

People in the group appear agitated or are behaving strangely

You provide evasive answers to questions

Suspicion that you are armed

Suspicion that you may be about to commit a crime using a weapon

Time of day or geographic area in conjunction with other factors

Considering LegalZoom's criteria, there doesn't appear to be any good reason for Bembury to be searched. So, he assumed it must be because he's a Black man walking through one of the richest neighborhoods on the planet.

Bembury asked for permission to film the police officers and they agreed. "So, I'm in fucking Beverly Hills and being searched for shopping at the store I work for and, uh, just being black," he says to the camera.

Then, then the officer says he's making things, "completely different."

The officers eventually let Bembury go and left him with a warning: "Next time, don't change the narrative like that."

But did he change the narrative? In a world where Black people are treated with greater suspicion by law enforcement, isn't it safe to assume that racial profiling could be why they're performing an unnecessary stop and frisk?

Would a white man in a tie-dyed shirt and a Versace bag suffer the same humiliation?

The Beverly Hills PD released bodycam footage of the incident, citing heavy traffic in the area for the officer's actions, adding that "Beverly Hills, unfortunately, has a lot of pedestrian accidents and traffic violations."

However, that doesn't explain why Bembury was frisked. Protecting someone from being the victim of a traffic accident has nothing to do with assuming they are holding a weapon.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

Keep ReadingShow less
Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

Keep ReadingShow less
Innovation

A student accidentally created a rechargeable battery that could last 400 years

"This thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going." ⚡️⚡️

There's an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

Keep ReadingShow less

A beautiful cruise ship crossing the seas.

Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

Keep ReadingShow less