Fay Wells said she locked herself out of her apartment on Sept. 6 in Santa Monica.
When she returned home later that night, she said she brought with her a locksmith.
Santa Monica police said a neighbor mistook that locksmith for a burglar and called 911.
That's when Wells said her nightmare began.
"I looked out the window and there was a man with a gun pointed at me," she said, as she looked across 19 Santa Monica police officers who responded to the scene that night. "I'm a black woman in America and there have been entirely too many incidents with people of color and police not ending — just not good endings, we end up dead."
Wells claims the officers had her come out with her hands up, handcuffed her, pulled her from her apartment and then went inside without her permission to search the residence.
"I just don't feel that this treatment is the same treatment that everyone gets," she said, claiming that she begged officers to let her show them her ID to prove she lived in the residence they believed she was breaking into.
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"They weren't trying to assess," she said. "They had already made up their minds on what had happened and that's what they were going on."
Audio from the interaction with police was released by the chief of the Santa Monica Police Department — an African American woman — who claims the officers did nothing wrong.
Wells said the recording is clipped to only include the interaction after police realized she was telling the truth.
"The point is they never believed me," she said. "There was no chance for them to look at me and go, 'this woman lives here. Let's ask her."
The local NAACP and the Santa Monica Committee for Racial Justice's Coalition for Police Reform said they stand by Wells' claims and are hoping to meet with the chief to discuss concerns.
In a statement on the Santa Monica Police Department's website, Chief Jacqueline A. Seabrooks, said such a response for this type of call is not uncommon.
"Because of factors such as the time of night, the number of possible suspects, and the nature of the call, multiple officers responded directly to the location and to the general area," she wrote. "Although fewer officers were actually dispatched to the call, because of what the neighbor reported to the 9-1-1 operator, two supervisors and fifteen police officers responded. Based on the information provided by the 9-1-1 caller, in smaller communities, like Santa Monica, a response of this type is not uncommon."
