Stepping out of Seattle Central Community College (SCCC), where he’d just finished up in the Computer Center, he took a gander at his watch. 9:35 p.m. And under a nighttime sky blanketed by clouds, he began his journey to Madison Valley.

Brooks headed north on Broadway. When he got to Denny, he turned right, traveling east. As he ventured homeward, he passed Cal Anderson Park. It was about then, he says, he noticed police activity: seven to 10 cruisers, up on 12th, blocking traffic. Officers, including one from the city’s K-9 Unit, busied themselves on the north side of Denny. Brooks kept to the sidewalk on the south.

“As I proceeded to walk,” says Brooks, “[a] police officer shined his flashlight on me, and he asked me stop.” He says the officer requested identification; Brooks handed it over. Then, he says, the officer spoke into the microphone attached to his shoulder strap, saying something to the effect of, “I think we have a suspect here.”

Asked by a number of officers where he was coming from, Brooks says he told them SCCC. Then he says he heard one officer say they wanted to bring the victim by. That’s when Brooks, a Black man who’s called Seattle home since 1980, says he began to get worried.

Soon afterwards, a squad car pulled up. Brooks says he couldn’t see through the glass, but heard a female voice say, “Affirmative.”

Brooks says after that, he was handcuffed. When he asked what the crime was, he says he was shocked to hear the officer’s response: “Attempted rape and assault.”

He was read his rights, he says. Then he was placed in the back of a squad car and driven to the East Precinct, where he was held for an hour and a half. From there, he was taken to King County Jail. Given scrubs to wear, Brooks says he visited a nurse, and, after having his blood pressure taken and responding to a few of her questions, he was placed, for no reason he can determine, on suicide watch.

The next afternoon, in court at a first appearance — wherein a judge, upon examining a police report, determines whether there’s probable cause in an alleged charge — bond was set for $25,000. Unable to raise the funds (Brooks works as a dishwasher at Elysian Fields in SoDo, bringing home $9 an hour), he was left to share a cell with close to 20 others, which Brooks said only had bunks for 14: Those without beds slept on the floor. There he remained until he was eventually released on Feb. 8. No charges were filed at the time.

All told, from the moment Brooks was picked up to the moment he was set free, he’d been held for just shy of 72 hours.

That was over a month ago. But for Brooks, the humiliation of and confusion surrounding those three days remains fresh. He says he’s got questions for the police. “I want to know why I was arrested, and why I had to stay in there so long,” says Brooks. “And why I was just dropped off in the system.”

To help ferret out answers, Brooks has obtained pro bono legal assistance from Sunil Abraham, staff attorney at the Racial Disparity Project, which sits within the Defender Association. Abraham says that they’ve tried to obtain a copy of the incident report from police, to view the Seattle Police Department’s perspective. But they were informed, says Abraham, with the case still being open, the only way to release the report is for Brooks’ legal counsel to initiate a discovery process. But such an undertaking, counters Abraham, represents a Catch-22, as Brooks would have to be charged with a crime in order for the discovery process to be set in motion.

“It’s not clear what it’s going to take [to obtain the report],” says Abraham, who adds that Brooks has written to the police specifically requesting parts of the report that pertain directly to him.

A media relations officer for the SPD says police investigators have sent the case across the street, to the prosecutor’s office. Senior deputy prosecuting attorney Dan Donohoe acknowledges his office has received the case and that it’s under review. As there’s still some follow-up investigation going on, Donohoe says, as of March 20, no decision has been made as to whether charges will be filed.

Abraham says that even though Brooks was told he was not being charged at the time, he wonders what will happen if Brooks, at any time in the future, is arrested again. Will the arrest be expunged from his record, or, asks Abraham, “Is this incident going to come back to haunt him?”

Haunting Brooks now are his feelings over how he was treated during those three days from arrest to release. He says that when he was being driven to the East Precinct — during which time Brooks says an officer commented that he had a “squeaky clean record” — he suggested to the officers they take him to SCCC, to have someone in the computer center verify he’d just been there. “But that never happened,” says Brooks.

Even with all his concerns — including the monetary strain produced by two days’ lost wages — Brooks says he wants people to know about what happened to him, so that people are aware how race played a part in his arrest. I want people to know, says Brooks, “that innocent Black men and African-American men in the community are being stopped for nothing. And just being taken off to jail.”