A Black realtor was showing a home to a Black father and son. They were handcuffed by Michigan police

Credit to CNN/Dakin Andone and Raja Razek

(CNN)-A Black realtor was showing a house to a Black man and his 15-year-old son in a Michigan suburb last week when they looked outside and saw police officers surrounding the property with their guns drawn.

“I knew once they surrounded the home they were preparing for a standoff,” the father, Roy Thorne, told CNN’s Don Lemon Friday. “And so my instincts told me we need to get out of here, we need to get to where they can see that we’re not a threat.”

A neighbor had called authorities, saying a suspect arrested at the property a week prior had returned to the scene, according to the Wyoming, Michigan, Department of Public Safety. But the caller was mistaken: The realtor, Eric Brown, was giving Thorne and his son Samuel a tour of the home in the community of Wyoming, just outside Grand Rapids, after scheduling the visit online the day before.

All three were eventually released without incident — but not before Wyoming police ordered them out of the home with their hands up and handcuffed each of them, briefly placing Thorne and his 15-year-old son in the back seats of separate patrol vehicles, according to footage released by Wyoming police.

“I was worried,” Thorne said, “but I was just more concerned about getting my son out of that situation and getting us all out of there.”

Asked if he felt they had been racially profiled, Brown said, “In that moment, it certainly felt that way.” He found it difficult to justify the level of force used, he said, describing it as a “tactical” response.

In a statement Friday, the Wyoming Department of Public Safety said it had conducted an internal review and concluded “race played no role in our officers’ treatment of the individuals, and our officers responded appropriately.”

“While it is unfortunate that innocent individuals were placed in handcuffs, our officers responded reasonably and according to department policy based on the information available to them at the time,” the statement said.

The incident scared 15-year-old Samuel Thorne, who told Lemon he felt “confusion and shock and fear … because I had no idea why they were all down there at that time.”

“It went from, ‘Dad, there’s cops outside,’ to ‘come outside with your hands up,'” Samuel said. “That was kind of like, just from zero to 100.”