‘It Was Very Humiliating’: Black Ohio Restaurant Owner Wrongly Arrested and Taken to Jail In Front of Customers Because He Had Same First Name as Drug Trafficking Suspect

A Black restaurant owner in Ohio is considering pursuing legal action after he was caught up in a case of mistaken identity that almost landed him in jail for a crime he never committed.

Bodycam footage caught the moments when Darnell McCloud was taken into custody by police officers in Fremont, Ohio, on July 11. The cops entered Fremont Coney Island, McCloud’s restaurant, and told him he had a warrant out for his arrest for two felony drug charges.

One major problem: McCloud wasn’t the suspect police were looking for. In fact, the only thing McCloud had in common with the suspect was that they shared a first name.

Police were looking for a man named Darnell Smith and detained McCloud instead.

“You have a warrant, Darnell,” one cop is heard telling McCloud on the bodycam footage.

Police never asked for identification or McCloud’s last name to verify they had the right person in custody. They never even showed him a warrant.

“What am I getting locked up for? What did y’all show me?” McCloud asked the cops on the way to county jail.

“It’s for the county. The county’s going to serve it to you at the jail,” a male officer answered.

McCloud continued to protest the arrest when he arrived at the jail, correcting a staff member who questioned him about his identity.

“My name ain’t Mr. Smith,” McCloud told the employee.

“What’s your whole name?” the employee asked.

“My name is Mr. McCloud. My name is Darnell McCloud,” McCloud responded.

With this information, the jail employee went straight to the arresting officer. The cop ran McCloud’s info through the police system, then called his supervisor to confess his mistake.

“I got bad news. We got the wrong guy,” the officer said to his boss.

“Dude, shut the f*** up, Chevy,” the supervisor said.

“I swear. He is Darnell McCloud, and it was Darnell Smith,” the officer said.

McCloud spent nearly 30 minutes at the jail before officers cleared and released him.

“I was pleading my innocence from the beginning. All the way from the beginning, actually,” McCloud told WTOL. “To be taken all the way down to the county jail for no reason, it was very humiliating.”

McCloud said he’s lived in Fremont for five years and just opened his restaurant nine months ago.

In the weeks since the wrongful arrest, Fremont Police started an internal disciplinary process to penalize the arresting officer, Chevy Farmer, for official misconduct. Farmer was suspended from his job for three days without pay and will have to undergo additional training in serving arrest warrants.

The mayor and police chief both apologized to McCloud for the ordeal.

“I’m of course, disappointed. We didn’t live up to the standards that our community expect us too,” Police Chief Derek Wensinger told WTVG. “We can’t do this alone. We need community support with community support, we are exponentially better at doing our job as police officers. We have been talking amongst ourselves on ways we can do better. It’s not just with interactions like this. There’s other things that we can do better.”

“I would encourage residents from the community to support (McCloud’s) business. It’s unfortunate that this situation happened, and it’s unacceptable,” Mayor Danny Sanchez told the Fremont News-Messenger. “I was sick to my stomach when I found out this happened to him. I could not imagine what it felt like for him.”

‘It Was Very Humiliating’: Black Ohio Restaurant Owner Wrongly Arrested and Taken to Jail In Front of Customers Because He Had Same First Name as Drug Trafficking Suspect