Dallas TV Reporter, Cameraman — Both Minorities — Have Cops Called On Them For Looking 'Suspicious' While Working

DALLAS, TX — A reporter for a Dallas television station who happens to be of Indian ancestry and her African-American cameraman had the police called on them this week for looking "suspicious" while covering an assignment.

"Homa Bash left the friendly confines of Northeast Ohio recently to go to work for Dallas for NBC 5," reported Cleveland Scene in referencing Bash's former stomping grounds. "Things are a little less friendly down there, it seems."

On Wednesday, Bash sent out a tweet detailing how she and her cameraman were detained after someone called the cops to report "...a Hispanic-looking woman and a black man with a suspicious white truck and camera," she said.

Well, the truck and camera are the tools of her trade. What's more, she traces her ancestral roots to India, not Latin America, not that it matters.

Bash took the incident in stride, tweeting a picture of her and her colleague with the caption: "When you get the cops called because a 'Hispanic-looking woman & black man with a suspicious white truck & camera' are near a school.

There's a smile on her face in the picture immediately following the incident, which she also posted to Facebook. But her experience lends insight into the current climate of heightened xenophobia — fueled by the politics of division — where people of color sometimes are viewed suspiciously.

To his credit, the responding officer reportedly immediately realized there was no validity to the charges of the two journalists being "suspicious," and Bash subsequently gave the officer a shout-out for having exhibited professionalism.

At last check, her tweet has been shared 60,000 times with double the amount in likes. The tweet has also given rise to others sharing their own stories of racial profiling, including an Amazon driver stopped while delivering a package.

A Plano Police Department spokesman subsequently told the Dallas Morning News this wasn't the first time journalists had been the subject of calls from residents, including one previous incident involving a former television reporter who's white. The spokesman added police still encourage residents to call if they deem anything to be suspicious or abnormal in their neighborhoods.

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