Is This Justice? One Man’s Story of Surviving the Same Police Nightmare Twice

What would you do if the police held you at gunpoint and falsely accused you of a violent crime? Now, what if it happened to you twice?
This is the reality for Raheem Howard of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A single, chilling question defines his recent life: How many times can the same police department point its weapons at an innocent man?
In 2018, Officer Yuseff Hamadeh crashed into Howard’s car and screamed, “I am going to f–king kill you!” When Howard fled in terror, the officer fired a shot. Later, he lied, claiming Howard had shot first. That lie sent Howard to jail for weeks on an attempted murder charge, until witnesses and a hidden camera recording exposed the truth. The officer faced minimal consequences.
Most of us would believe such a horrific, random injustice could only happen once. But for Howard, a new question emerged in June 2025: Could it happen again?
The answer, delivered by Baton Rouge police for a second time, was yes. Pulled over after the gym because he was a Black man in a gray car—a description fitting half the city—Howard found himself on his knees, hands raised, with an officer’s gun aimed at his head. His only crime was matching a vague description. For six minutes, his life depended on absolute stillness. “One false move and I would have been dead,” he said.
Officers handcuffed him, placed him in a squad car, and searched his vehicle without a warrant. They found no gun. He was released with a terse radio call: “It’s not him.”
But the questions didn’t end with his release. Why did the Baton Rouge Police Department spend seven months fighting to hide the body camera footage? And when they finally released it, why was the video so heavily blurred that the crucial details were obscured, while the damning audio remained clear?
These actions prompt a larger, more uncomfortable question: Is this a case of tragic mistakes, or does it reflect a deeper, systemic pattern?
Howard’s story is not an isolated incident for the BRPD. The department currently faces lawsuits alleging officers operated a hidden “torture warehouse” to abuse Black residents. So, we must ask: When a man is twice subjected to potentially lethal force based on falsehoods, and the department’s response is to hide the evidence, what does that say about accountability? Who protects citizens when the protectors become the threat?
Raheem Howard survived his two nightmares. But his story leaves us with a final, unresolved question: How many more times must this happen before something truly changes?