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Not All Black People Look the Same
Pervasive police cases of mistaken identity continue to harm Black people.
Philadelphian Julie Hudson, a 31-year-old Ph.D. candidate, had applied for multiple jobs but was repeatedly rejected because of her supposed criminal record.
In fact, Ms. Hudson, who is Black, didn’t have a criminal record.
So on January 5, 2023, she went into a Philadelphia police station hoping to fix the issue; instead, she was arrested and put in jail for an outstanding warrant from Webster, Texas.
Ms. Hudson had never even been to Texas.
The investigative sleuths in law enforcement watched a surveillance video of a woman shoplifting in Webster and because of similar names and the same gender and skin color, they determined Julie Hudson of Philadelphia was the offender.
Nearly a week later, on January 11, Julie Hudson was finally released from jail and her name cleared. Oops. It was the wrong Black woman.
A week in jail.
In 2017, police punched a 19-year-old Black woman in the mouth, then unleashed the K9 unit on her. The officer claimed he mistook her for a 170-pound, bald Black man suspected of threatening people with a machete at a nearby grocery store.
