Like the rest of his Warriors teammates, Klay Thompson is fed up.
He might not be in Orlando with many of his NBA comrades, but he has taken to social media to express outrage with an apparent case of racial profiling in Tiburon — an affluent municipality located in the San Francisco metropolitan area.
Thompson’s rage results from an incident involving Yema Khalif and Hawi Awash, a married couple who own an African-inspired clothing and apparel store in Tiburon.
Around 1:00 a.m. on the night in question, the couple were in their store conducting business and working through inventory when they recognized that a police car had circled the block multiple times before parking across the street. An officer eventually approached and began questioning the couple and whether they had a legitimate purpose for being in the store, despite it being fully lit and there being no visible evidence of any crime being committed.
A verbal altercation ensued and only grew more hostile when the first officer at the scene called for backup. The conflict was resolved when a neighbor, awoken by the arguing, yelled out to the police officers that Yema was actually the owner of the store.
Since then, the incident, which was recorded on a mobile phone, has received tremendous coverage. Thompson took notice, writing the following of the incident in an Instagram story on his account:
Tiburon PD, wtf??? This is how y’all treat hard-working self-made business owners? Wait no, just the African ones. Y’all Make sick and there better be some change with how y’all deal with my brothers and sisters @yemacalif. Black people always have to prove their innocence no matter how ‘successful’ they are. This [expletive]’s really exhausting.
Since the incident, there has been an outpouring of support from the local community for the couple, but that isn’t likely to make anyone feel better about the occurrence of the incident — not Yema, the community and, obviously, not Klay Thompson.
Klay sounds off on Black business owners being racially profiled in Tiburon.
(Via Klay Thompson's IG story) pic.twitter.com/AoXAiQRtPg
— Ali Thanawalla (@Ali_Thanawalla) August 28, 2020
