An unidentified woman falsely accused a black teenager of stealing her phone.
Photo: @ keyonharrold / Instagram
On Saturday, Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold and his 14-year-old son were on their way to brunch at Arlo, a boutique hotel in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood, when they were intercepted by a bustling woman in the lobby. The confrontation, which Harrold recorded on his phone, was ugly: in the video, the unidentified woman addresses Harrold and Keyon Harrold Jr., both black, accusing the latter of stealing his iPhone. She then furiously demands that the hotel manager help her – and to Harrold’s disbelief, the manager agrees, asking Harrold Jr. to hand over the phone. The video is cut when Harrold and his son try to leave the scene, after which she is supposed to approach the son. She too, the hotel later informed Harrold, found her phone shortly after the confrontation.
Since Harrold shared the footage, it has gone viral on social media platforms, drawing comparisons to the notorious clash between Amy Cooper and a black bird watcher in Central Park last summer. The video also spawned two separate investigations: one by the New York Police Department and one by the Manhattan public prosecutor’s office. Here’s what we know so far.
When Harrold started recording his meeting with his wife at Arlo, where he had been staying as a guest since mid-December, the situation was already tense. In the video, the woman yells at Harrold Jr., “take the bag, it’s mine”, before demanding that the hotel manager “literally take it back”. When the manager asks Harrold Jr. if he can see the phone, Harrold is amazed. “Are you kidding me?” he asks the woman and the manager. “Do you think there is only one iPhone made in the world?” The video ends when he and his son are moving towards the elevator for the postponement, which was unsuccessful. Harrold says the woman then grabbed her son and tried to stick her hands in her pockets, what the family is calling aggression. “She scratched me; she approached him and grabbed him. He’s a child !!! “Harrold wrote on Instagram. He’s just grateful to be there to protect his son:” I’ve seen people being hurt or even killed for less, “he told New York Times.
Harrold says the hotel later told him that the woman had been a hotel guest earlier in the week, and that shortly after the incident, she found her phone: Apparently, she was in the lobby the whole time, where an Uber driver had left him after she left him in the car. Harrold says the woman did not apologize to him or her son.
As the video quickly went viral on social media – on Monday night, it was seen almost 2 million times on Instagram alone – the incident was widely reported as another blatant example of racial discrimination, and which the hotel handled flagrantly inadequate. As Harrold wrote on Instagram, the manager “empowered her !!!” and “didn’t even consider the fact that we were really the guests.” As he later elaborated to Times, “They assumed he was guilty. Management didn’t even ask her why she would think he had the phone. ”The family also told Washington Post that hotel security would allow the woman to leave while waiting for the police to arrive.
Only on Sunday – after the video circulated widely and sparked fierce protests, many of which were directed at the hotel – did Arlo formally apologize. In a statement provided to the Times, the hotel apologized for not doing enough to “slow down the dispute”, characterizing the incident as “baseless accusation, prejudice and aggression against an innocent guest” that “no Arlo guest – or anyone – should be subject to this kind of behavior. ”The statement continued:“ We are committed to ensuring that this never happens again at any of our hotels ”.
On Sunday, the NYPD confirmed that it is investigating the incident, although the department declined to publicly identify the woman. Then, on Monday, The Manhattan district attorney’s office said Intelligencer that the office had opened its own investigation. According to Harrold’s lawyer Ben Crump, the family believe the woman must face aggression and battery charges.