Justice

Man's Story About the Dangers of Working While Black Goes Viral

April 28th 2016

Making house calls for work can be quite dramatic. A photo that Joshua Houser posted on Facebook is going viral both for his funny picture and comments but also for the ridiculous situation his pictures seem to show.

Houser claims in a Facebook post that he went to a customer's house for work and started looking for wires. He works at Intuit, according to his Facebook page. Soon after getting there, he says the police showed up and drew their guns.

"So I'm at work at a customers house, the police show up guns drawn tell me to put my hands up, I refuse and they tell me I'm accused of walking around the property and trying to open doors and looking thru windows trying to get in to steal stuff. Meanwhile in the real world I'm looking for some cable wiring that is underground no where near any houses, in a bright red cable shirt, in big white cable truck!!! My bad are you using my truck as your desk?! I'm so sorry America didn't realized working was a crime?!!? #‎blackslivesmatter."

According to his Facebook post, Houser was wearing a cable shirt the entire time he was at the house. He also claims in the post that he was accused of walking around the house, looking through windows, and trying to open doors.

We've reached out to Houser, but ATTN: cannot yet confirm the authenticity of the Facebook post. Regardless, the conversation surrounding the Facebook post — about the police and race — is worth highlighting.

His original post was shared more than 40,000 times on Facebook and many of the people who commented were in disbelief about the funny but scary post from Houser. ATTN: previously reported that you are much more likely to be fatally shot by police if you're Black than if you're white. Many of the posts on social media allude to that fact.

Facebook/Joshua Houser - facebook.com

The post even made it's way to Twitter:

Twitter/TyreeBP - twitter.com

In 2015, 990 people were shot and killed by police, according to an investigation by The Washington Post

We've reached out to the Franklin Park Borough police department in Pennsylvania, which seems to be the police department involved based on the picture. Franklin Park Borough is a suburb of Pittsburgh with 13,000 people named after Benjamin Franklin according to the town website. We also reached out to the Franklin Park Police Department, and we will update if we get responses from the department or Houser.

RELATED: You Can't Ignore This Troubling Pattern in Policing

Share your opinion

Have you ever felt like you were being unjustly harassed by the police?

No 47%Yes 53%