Two years ago, Finney Law Firm was proud to represent African American Realtor Jerry Isham and his African American home buyer, Tony Edwards, who were accosted by seven Cincinnati Police officers, guns drawn, then handcuffed for nearly five minutes, and forcibly searched, simply for the “crime” of showing a home listed for sale (and really it was no more complicated than that). The City of Cincinnati settled the civil claim 16 hours and 30 minutes after the suit was filed by Finney Law Firm attorneys.
Then, in August of this year, the Isham story appeared to repeat itself in Grand Rapids, Michigan with the arrest of African American Realtor Eric Brown of Keller Williams and his buyer, Roy Thorne, who were arrested simply for viewing a home listed for sale. Read about that here.
On November 13, the National Association of Realtors will feature Isham and Brown in a symposium entitled “Race & Real Estate” at its annual Realtors Conference & Expo in San Diego, California to shine a spotlight on the extra challenges faced by African Americans in the real estate industry.
Our firm was proud to represent Jerry Isham, a top real estate professional in Cincinnati and the owner of Movement Realty, who did not deserve this shabby treatment by Cincinnati Police, in this matter. We are pleased that his case has been given this important platform for further exploration of racism in the real estate industry.
Isham is the former President of both the Ohio and Cincinnati Realtists Associations and is currently the Region VIII Vice President of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers.
Our Public Interest Law team at Finney Law Firm, including Chris Finney and Curt Hartman, pursued the public records (mostly dash cam and body cam videos) of the incident, and filed this case in federal court on behalf of Isham and Edwards.
If you are attending the National Association of Realtors’ Convention & Expo, we encourage you to attend this important session.
- For more background on the Isham story and the work of the Finney Law Firm’s Public Interest Law team, read here and watch here. The story captivated Cincinnati television viewers and was the topic of radio talk shows for weeks. Watch here, here, here, and here and read here and here. It even made news internationally. Read here. Veteran Cincinnati reporter Jennifer Edwards Baker of WXIX, Channel 19, initially broke the story. The Youtube video linked to this story analyzing in detail the Isham/Edwards arrest has had more than 5.6 million views, so the story has since captivated the nation.
