Black Man goes to police when he was allegedly false accused of stealing a phone. Then officers pull an uno-reverse: ‘So, my word doesn’t count?’

Videos circulating online from around August 30 show a Black man named Dhextrus describing a confrontation at a convenience store gas station in Vancouver. He said he contacted the police after a woman accused him of taking her phone, and a man then allegedly struck him.

Dhextrus said the woman’s phone-theft claim was false. He stated that a South Asian man stepped in during the dispute and hit his arm hard enough that he later told officers on camera he could not feel it.

According to The Atlanta Black Star, at least four officers in tactical gear arrived after he reported an assault. Once they set aside the phone-theft allegation, Dhextrus asked them to charge the man who had allegedly hit him. The officers declined, pointing to a lack of video evidence.

Police declined an assault charge after the phone-theft claim was set aside

Dhextrus asked the officers, “So, my word doesn’t count?” The supervising officer answered, “It doesn’t count for evidence, no. It would count as backing if we had some video evidence of it, for sure.” He then said, “But we don’t…so it’s an allegation.”

Dhextrus asked the officers to collect security video from nearby businesses. They declined that request. The officer said police were instead going by “third-party witnesses” who said no assault took place.

Speaking on camera, Dhextrus told the officer, “I feel this is very unfair and it’s because I am a Black person.” He continued, “I know it, if I was a white person, you guys would press charges…. I know that for a fact. If I were an Indian or a white person, it wouldn’t be the way it’s going now.”

The officer replied, “So I just got yelled at by another Black person and a South Asian person.” The officer’s comment reflects a broader pattern of tense police encounters, such as when a Black man started recording during a welfare check in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

Dhextrus said, “I’m not yelling, I’m just upset.” He added, “It’s not fair. This is not fair.” Under Canadian law, private citizens do not press charges, and video is not required as a legal condition for a case to proceed.

People who watched the videos questioned the split treatment of accounts. One viewer said the officer treated Dhextrus’s statement as insufficient while accepting other people’s statements that an assault did not happen.

Viewers also told Dhextrus to file a police report and ask for the nearby security footage, and they said they were waiting to hear what happened next. This situation highlights a broader pattern of individuals being accused of theft while seeking to prove their innocence, as when Walmart staff allegedly accused a woman of stealing her own sweatshirt after she asked them to check the cameras.