Beverly Hills police apologize for arresting black producer

BEVERLY HILLS, CA -- The Beverly Hills Police Department is apologizing after mistakenly arresting a black television producer and holding him for several hours.

Charles Belk wrote on Facebook that a police officer grabbed him on Friday as he was walking away from a restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard.

"Within minutes, I was surrounded by six police cars, handcuffed very tightly, fully searched for weapons and placed back on the curb," he wrote.

Authorities say officers believed that he was an accomplice to 47-year-old Brianna Clemons, who had been arrested that day for an armed bank robbery in the 8400 block of Wilshire Boulevard.

Police held him for six hours until they were able to review bank surveillance video and realized he was not involved in the heist.

The mistake was made because Belk "matched the clothing and physical characteristics of the male suspect," police said in a statement, although police did not release what the description had been.

"I was wrongly arrested, locked up, denied a phone call, denied explanation of charges against me, denied ever being read my rights, denied being able to speak to my lawyer for a lengthy time, and denied being told that my car had been impounded ... All because I was mis-indentified as the wrong 'tall, bald head, black male,'" Belk wrote on Facebook.

A week ago, Beverly Hills police apologized after saying they had arrested former Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland for shoplifting. It turned out to be someone pretending to be Weiland.