A Wisconsin police department apologized after a young Black man was handcuffed at gunpoint because a neighbor assumed he was a burglar and called the police.
Keonte Furdge was living peacefully in a house owned by his former football coach with a friend until Tuesday morning, according to Madison 365. The home in Monona, a suburb of Madison, was previously occupied by the coach’s mother, who is deceased. An unidentified neighbor spotted the 23-year-old while he was standing on the porch of the home talking on the phone and called the police. The individual told the dispatcher the home was supposed to be vacant.
About 20 minutes later, after he’d gone inside, Furdge heard Monona Police officers enter the home.
“I didn’t hear a knock. I didn’t hear a doorbell ring. I didn’t hear anything,” he told Madison 365. “I wasn’t wearing my AirPods. I was just laying in the bed. And then they … announced themselves, ‘Monona Police.’ I was like, ‘OK, what’s going on?’ And once I said that, they said, ‘Come out with your hands up.’ So, I came out with my hands up.”
The officers had their weapons drawn and questioned Furdge about his presence. They asked about weapons and if there was anyone else in the house before the explaining why they were there.
“He was like, ‘Well, we got a suspicious call saying that people was on the property, and the lady that lived here was deceased,’” Furdge told the outlet. “I was like, ‘Well, my coach knows that me and my friend are staying here.’ And my hands are still up. The guns are still pointing at me for some reason. They still … They didn’t put the guns down.”
Furdge said at least three officers had their weapons pointed at him, two inside and one more outside of a bedroom window. There were two or three more officers in the yard.
“I was definitely afraid for my life,” he said.
Furdge knew one of the officers who worked as a school resource officer when the athlete was a teenager.
“He knew that I played football. He knew I was a good kid. He knew I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.
He was cuffed for five minutes until the police spoke to the homeowner.
Toren Young, Furdge’s friend and roommate, who was not home at the time of the police encounter, said in a social media post that one officer later told him it is “very common for them to get calls from members of the community because they fear black people.”
“They stated a black person can be doing something as simple as walking their dog and the police are called to make sure nothing suspicious is going on,” Young wrote on Facebook.
Furdge feels betrayed by a community he once proudly represented.
“It kills us because we did a lot for that community,” he said to Madison365. “They only care for us when we play sports for them. We’re their high school heroes. We give them trophies, we give them rings. Give them conference [championships]. Then after we’re done, they give us nothing. “Well, racism.”
The young men filed a formal complaint against the police department. In a statement, Monona Police Chief Walter Ostrenga said one of the officers involved in the incident apologized to Furdge personally.
“The Monona Police Department is committed to creating an environment of trust and empathy in all our interactions between the public and our peace officers,” Ostrenga said in a statement released Tuesday. “This complaint will be thoroughly investigated.”
By Wednesday the city had issued a formal apology to Furdge on its Facebook page, saying, “We sincerely apologize for the distress this situation caused the resident, and we take it seriously. We cannot begin to understand the frustration caused by this situation but know that it is our responsibility as elected officials to put in the work to do so.”
Furdge told Madison365 he will no longer be staying at the home.
