*A Black male youth leader in Compton is speaking out about being wrongfully detained by Los Angeles County deputies who dragged him out of his home half-naked.
Derrick Cooper, 54, says it was a case of mistaken identity when deputies descended upon his home last week looking for a burglary suspect, NBC News reports. Cooper said he was awakened at 4 a.m. on April 18 to find deputies in his bedroom with guns drawn. He was escorted him out of his home half-naked — but released once deputies realized he was not the criminal they were looking for.
“I was not valued as a human being,” Cooper said Tuesday during a news conference.
“To just come in and blatantly take me out of my safe place and put me in a place that I’m helpless and afraid for my life —it’s one of the worst things imaginable,” he added.
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For the past 27 years, Cooper has run the L.A. City Wildcats facility, a youth sports academy. His apartment is in the same building. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said deputies from the Compton Station were responding to an attempted burglary call near this area when they targeted Cooper’s building.
Cooper said when he woke up to officers in his bedroom with guns, he thought he wouldn’t live to see another day.
“I just went into survival mode,” he told reporters.
“I’m like, ‘They’re either here to kill me or I’ve done something that I don’t know about,’” he said. “I said, ‘I’m unarmed, I live alone, please do not shoot me.’”
Cooper was naked from the waist down while handcuffed and detained at his facility. The deputies refused to allow him to put on underwear or pants.
“As much as I wanted to reach for something to cover up, I just knew if I did that, it was not going to be good for me. So as embarrassed as I was, I chose being embarrassed to live another day,” he said.
Cooper said the deputies ignored him when he repeatedly asked, “What am I being arrested for?”
“I thought [a deputy] was going to say, ‘Sit down, cover up, let me tell you why we’re here.’ That didn’t happen,” Cooper said. “This is not right. He walked me out of my building onto Compton Boulevard with no shoes, no socks on.”
Cooper was detained for 20 minutes in a patrol car before he heard the dispatch radio say: “You guys are at the wrong building. Let him go.”
The officers apologized to Cooper but he remains shaken up about the incident.
“The biggest disappointment that I’m dealing with right now is that I cannot be involved with the kids in the community that I serve,” he said. “Mentally I can’t give them that service right now. This is so unfair to me. Because all I ever wanted to do in life was do what someone did for me, give me the chance to be a kid, give me a chance to make memories and give me a chance to be a productive citizen.”
Cooper’s attorney has reportedly filed a claim against the sheriff’s department for damages.
“I’m not going to rest until justice is served with this. It’s so much bigger than me,” Cooper said. “I want to speak for those that were actually killed in their homes by law enforcement and weren’t able to speak. If God’s going to use me in that capacity, so be it. I accept it.”
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