Lady accuses teen of theft in NY lodge, drawing comparisons to different false accusations in opposition to Black folks within the US.
A confrontation wherein a person mentioned a girl tackled his 14-year-old Black son in a New York Metropolis lodge foyer as she falsely accused the teenager of stealing her telephone is below investigation, metropolis prosecutors confirmed on Monday.
Keyon Harrold, a outstanding jazz trumpeter, posted a broadly considered video of the confrontation on Saturday on the Arlo Resort. He mentioned the unidentified girl scratched him and tackled and grabbed his son, Keyon Harrold Jr, on the decrease Manhattan lodge the place the pair have been staying.
“He’s the sweetest, most real child you may ask for,” Harrold mentioned in an interview Monday night. “I used to be simply appalled at how he was handled.”
The video reveals an agitated girl demanding her telephone be returned whereas a lodge supervisor tries to settle the state of affairs. At one level, the lady appeared to hurry ahead and mentioned, “I’m not letting him stroll away with my telephone!”
Jazz musician @keyonharrold was staying at @ArloHotels in New York when a girl falsely accused his 14-year-old son of stealing her iPhone.
Lady: “He’s not leaving…I’m not letting him stroll away with my telephone.”
The girl’s telephone was present in an Uber.pic.twitter.com/qWMKE9XSSy
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) December 28, 2020
Harrold mentioned the telephone was returned by an Uber driver shortly afterwards.
The confrontation prompted comparisons to current incidents involving false accusations in opposition to Black folks.
A white girl was charged with submitting a false report for calling 911 and saying she was being threatened by “an African American man” throughout a dispute with a Black man in New York’s Central Park in Could.
That case impressed New York state legislators in June to go a regulation that makes it simpler below civil rights regulation to sue a person who calls a police officer on somebody “with out cause” due to their background, together with race and nationwide origin.
“There are millions of Black males sitting in jail who’ve been falsely accused,” Harrold mentioned. “That’s why we’ve got to handle incidents like this now, earlier than they develop into life-altering, life-impacting points that negatively and devastatingly have an effect on Black folks.”
The dad and mom of Keyon Harrold Jr and civil rights lawyer Ben Crump issued an announcement Monday, calling on the Manhattan district legal professional to carry assault and battery expenses in opposition to the lady “to ship the message that hateful, racially motivated conduct is unacceptable.”
“As this 12 months of racial consciousness is drawing to a detailed, it’s deeply troubling that incidents like this one, wherein a Black youngster is considered as and handled like a legal, proceed to occur,” learn the assertion.
Crump and the Harrold household additionally known as for a civil rights investigation into the Arlo Resort “for its implicit bias” in its remedy of the teenager.
New York Metropolis police didn’t determine the lady, saying solely that there was a harassment grievance on file for an incident Saturday contained in the lodge.
A spokesperson for Manhattan District Lawyer Cy Vance mentioned the workplace is “completely investigating this incident” however didn’t elaborate.
Resort administration mentioned in a posting Sunday they reached out to Harrold and his son to apologise.
“We’re deeply disheartened in regards to the current incident of baseless accusation, prejudice, and assault in opposition to an harmless visitor of Arlo Resort,” they mentioned in a Fb put up.
Keyon Harrold is initially from Ferguson, Missouri, and lives in New York Metropolis. He has carried out with musicians together with Beyonce, Rihanna and Eminem, based on his web site.