NBC Boston, April 2021
When former Newton resident Tim Duncan and his wife were walking to the grocery store in May, they expected a leisurely stroll. Instead, Duncan, a Black man, found himself staring at a gun. “We wanted to spend some quality time together,” Duncan said. “All hell broke loose after we turned the corner.” Newton police officers stopped Duncan and his wife while looking for a murder suspect thought to be in the area.
The officers soon realized Duncan was not the man they were looking for, he said. However, Duncan, a former deputy athletic director for external affairs at Northeastern University who spoke out publicly about the experience last summer, said he believes the incident is an example of racial profiling. “None of us should be stopped in that manner—just because I was a tall, Black man,” he said. “I wasn’t policed the way other folks are policed.
