Kazeem Oyeneyin was sleeping when he heard his burglar alarm going off. He realized his friend, who had been sleeping over that night, inadvertently set it off when he left, so Oyeneyin got out of bed, went downstairs and turned it off.
He went back to sleep but was jolted from his bed about 20 minutes later by a loud noise downstairs. Oyeneyin didn't know what was going on and grabbed his legally-owned handgun as a precaution.
"I go downstairs. I disengage the alarm. I go back upstairs. I laid down. Twenty minutes later, I just hear these loud noises," Oyeneyin told ABC News. "So, I come down my steps. I grab my gun because I don't know who's in the house."
A Raleigh police officer was responding to the burglar alarm and opened his front door, which was unlocked, and yelled: "Police! (If) you're inside, let yourself be known."
As Oyeneyin began walking toward the steps, the officer noticed he was armed and ordered him to drop the gun and put his hands up.
Oyeneyin immediately complied and the officer told him to step outside. He refused to leave his home, pointing out that he was only wearing his underwear. The two begin to argue and the officer ordered him to get down on his knees and turn around.
Eventually, Oyeneyin was placed in handcuffs despite stating multiple times that he lived there.
"I'm just trying to figure out whether you're supposed to be here or not, OK?" the officer told him.
"I got on drawers, bro ... (what do) you mean, am I supposed to be here?" Oyeneyin replied.
Oyeneyin offered to provide his identification, but the officer led him outside and placed him a squad car while other deputies searched his home.
"While the cop was trying to put me in the car, I'm screaming, like 'Yo!' because I want my neighbors to come out and tell them that I live there," Oyeneyin said. "So, the neighbors are just looking through the windows, and I'm just humiliated. Nobody wants to say nothing. Everybody's just looking."
Eventually, officers confirmed that he lived in the house and released him.
This isn't the first time Oyeneyin has had to deal with the police because of a false alarm. In each of those instances, the officers checked his identification and quickly determined there was not an intruder.
Oyeneyin says the most recent incident escalated because he is black.
"I want to raise awareness to what's going on," he told CNN. "This has been going on too long, and I just need it to stop."
He says his neighbors think he is a criminal after watching him get taken out of his house in handcuffs.
"This was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life," he said, adding the claim that he doesn't have a criminal record and has a permit to carry a concealed weapon. "I mean, I felt like my character was defamed. I went outside the other day, the neighbors wouldn't even wave at me. They don't know what's going on. They think I'm a whole criminal over here."
The Raleigh Police Department defended the actions of their officers, pointing out that Oyeneyin was armed and that the first officer to respond "had no way to safely confirm the validity of the statement or check the residence for additional persons until other officers arrived on scene."