Two weeks after former Northeastern deputy athletic director Tim Duncan was confronted at gunpoint by Newton police officers who said he fit the description of a murder suspect, he described how he made the decision to go public with his story.
“I wanted to process it. I wanted to think deeply about it. And quite frankly, I had compartmentalized and started to normalize it,” Duncan, who is Black, told Jim Braude on WGBH News’ Greater Boston Thursday. “Then, after the murder of George Floyd, it hit me. ... One of my friends brought it home and said, ‘Tim, that could’ve been you.’”
The Newton incident happened on May 20, five days before Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis. Duncan first spoke about his experience in an online video posted Monday.
As told by Duncan and, later, the Newton Police Department, Duncan was walking near his home with his wife when police stopped him, with one officer drawing his gun.
Newton police said in a public statement after Duncan posted his video that they had been surveilling a house in the area to try and locate a murder suspect wanted by Boston police, and that Duncan, who was walking in the area, “fit the physical description.”
The real murder suspect, Yaliek Allah-Barnes, was arrested the next day coming out of the house the police had been watching.
In his video, Duncan denounced the officers’ actions towards him.
“It’s not OK that just because I’m a tall Black man walking one block from his house, that I’m pulled over and say that I fit a profile of a murder suspect just because he was tall,” he said. “I understand that the police have to do their job, trust me, I do. But to roll down on me with guns drawn when I’m walking on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon with my wife is uncalled for.
Speaking Thursday on Greater Boston, Duncan told Braude that he had experienced something similar twice before in his life, both during traffic stops.
He said in those cases, police officer that he liked to call “over-oppressive law enforcement” approached his car at night.
“If there were two, one of them would have a gun, and there was one time where one person had a gun,” he described.
“Most parents talk to their kids about how to… interact with police … But the black parent goes a little bit further, because they know that there have been people killed reaching for their ID,” Duncan said. “So that’s why it’s normalized, because … I’ve had that training my entire life.”
He called such teachings from his parents “life-saving.”
In the Newton police statement, it notes that Duncan “told Police [sic] he did not feel safe putting his hands down to get his wallet, so a Newton police officer got his wallet.”
Duncan said on Thursday that since he went public, the mayor, police chief and civil rights officer of Newton have all reached out to apologize and vowed to use the moment to teach their officers.
