She heard Patterson tell Bennett that people like her don't shop in expensive boutiques. She heard him order Bennett to leave for making customers uncomfortable when Bennett had done absolutely nothing. She heard Bennett clearly state she was the owner, and heard Patterson accuse her of lying. She heard the handcuffs click closed and Bennett's protests as she was dragged toward the exit. The footage was damning and irrefutable.
Chen also obtained copies of the videos the customers had recorded on their phones. One video had already gone viral with 8 million views in just 3 hours. The caption read, "Black business owner arrested in her own luxury boutique by racist cop and his Karen wife." The comment section was filled with outrage and demands for justice. But the security footage and viral videos were just the beginning.
Chen subpoenaed Officer Dennis Patterson's complete personnel file from the police department, and what she found was a pattern of racist behavior that should have ended his career years ago. Patterson had worked for the police department for 22 years. During that time, 15 excessive force complaints had been filed against him. 13 of those complaints came from black or Hispanic suspects. He had 19 wrongful detention complaints in his record.
16 were filed by minorities. Every single complaint had been investigated internally and either dismissed or resulted in nothing more than a written warning that went into his file and was ignored. Chen dug deeper and pulled Patterson's arrest records for the past 7 years. She found that 44% of his arrests of black suspects were later dismissed due to lack of evidence, procedural violations, or prosecutorial discretion. The dismissal rate for his arrests of white suspects was 9%.
The pattern was undeniable and had been documented for nearly a decade, but the police department had never taken meaningful action to stop him. Chen also discovered that Patricia Patterson had called the police on black people in her neighborhood seven times over the past 4 years. She'd reported a black man acting suspicious while jogging in the park. He was a cardiologist who lived two blocks away. She'd called about a black family having a barbecue in a public recreation area, claiming they were being too loud.
No other neighbors had complained. She'd reported a black teenager walking through her neighborhood. He was delivering newspapers. None of her calls had ever resulted in actual crimes being discovered because there were no crimes, just Patricia's racism seeing threats where none existed. The investigation also revealed something that made the case even more explosive.
Ryan Mitchell, a black attorney who lived in the same affluent neighborhood as the Pattersons, came forward after seeing the viral video. He told Chen that Officer Patterson had stopped him six times over two years while he was driving through his own neighborhood, demanding to know where he was going and what he was doing there. Mitchell had filed three formal complaints with the police department. All three were dismissed as unsubstantiated. Chen tracked down four other people who had been racially profiled by Officer Patterson.