Thursday, March 28, 2024

Neighbors Call Police on Former White House Staffer for ‘Moving While Black’ [Video]

*Former White House staffer Darren Martin was left quite unsettled this past Friday when he received a visit from the cops.

Martin, who spent years working on Capitol Hill and in the White House with the Obama Administration, recently made the move back to New York, getting a job with the city and finding a unit in a 5-story walk-up on the Upper West Side.

According to the report, on moving day this past Friday, Martin got an unexpected visit from the NYPD.

It’s yet another case of black folks trying to live and white folks being uncomfortable about that.

“I’m in my apartment but you know – you can’t go nowhere without the cops following me,” Martin said during the encounter live streamed via Instagram.

Turns out, someone called 911 to report a “burglary in progress” and the suspect was the building’s new tenant – Martin.

“Somebody called the cops on me in my own building,” he told viewers. “About how many are ya’ll? About six of ya’ll showed up, rolled up on me.”

Scroll up and watch the video report above.

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He added: “I didn’t really think anyone was going to call the cops on me because I mean – I was moving into the building.”

In the live video which Martin shared on Facebook and Twitter, one of the responding officers can he heard on a 2-way radio with a dispatcher describing the call.

“Somebody was trying to break in the door” with a “possible weapon,” the dispatcher said, describing the weapon as a “large tool.”

An investigation later determined there was nothing criminal about Martin’s activity.

Martin says his skin color along with the gentrifying neighborhood along 106th Street were obvious factors that led to police being called.

“As a black man when you’re in an all-white environment, you’re cognizant of that,” he said. “I have to say I found it kinda symbolic. [It’s] like welcome to the neighborhood.”

Martin hopes the incident serves as a teaching moment for the neighbor who called police on him.

“The broader message to everyone is get to know folks before you make these assumptions,” he said. “When you make that call there’s no turning back and it couldn’t ended very differently.”

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