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By Sarah Calams
LONG BEACH, Calif. — A police union has released bodycam footage of an encounter with a campus police officer and professor after the situation led to racial profiling claims.
The footage from Cal State Long Beach campus police shows the moment an officer spoke with sociology professor Dr. Steven Osuna, who had locked himself out of his campus building and asked the officer to assist him in getting back inside his office, CBS News reported.
In the video, the officer asks for Osuna’s campus ID, but the professor says he recently lost his ID card. The officer also asks if the professor can call his dean per university policy, but Osuna says he does not know the dean’s number.
“In there I have pictures of myself and my family. You’ll see that. I promise you’ll see that,” Osuna says to the officer. “You just got to open up the hallway. I just forgot my keys when I used the restroom.”
The officer calls his supervisor, who says Osuna can not enter the building without proper identification due to university policies. Toward the end of the video, Osuna tells the officer he believes he’s not letting him back inside of the building due to his race.
The union pushed back against those claims and Matt Kroner, statewide university police association president, said there are many reasons for the policy to exist.
“We could have been wrongfully letting in an employee that had been wrongfully terminated or placed on administrative leave,” Kroner told CBS. “We believe he falsely injected race into a policy dispute.”
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