On Saturday afternoon, Keyon Harrold, a prominent jazz musician, and his 14-year-old son entered the lobby of Arlo, a boutique hotel in SoHo where they were staying, when they were approached by a woman they had never seen before.
The woman falsely accused the teenager of taking her cell phone and demanded that he return it. The tension grew, with the woman insisting that the teenager had the phone, yelling at him and eventually approaching him and trying to look in his pockets before they could part, said Harrold.
Harrold, who is black, recorded parts of the altercation in a cell phone video, which was widely shared on social media this weekend as another example of false accusations against blacks. This drew comparisons to an incident in May, when a white woman called 911 to falsely claim that a black bird watcher in Central Park was threatening her life.
Harrold said in an interview on Sunday that the SoHo episode shocked him.
He said he believed he and his son, Keyon Harrold Jr., may have suffered a racial profile, although he said he did not know the woman’s race.
“I wonder what would happen if it were different, if it were a black woman and there was a 14 year old white girl,” he said.
In Mr. Harrold’s video, the hotel manager can be seen identifying himself and asking his son to show a cell phone, in an apparent attempt to verify the woman’s claim. But the manager had no reason to believe the woman, Harrold said.
“They assumed he was guilty,” said Harrold. “Management didn’t even ask her why she would think he had the phone.”
The woman was not publicly identified. Both the police and the hotel refused to share the name, and Harrold said he did not know who she was or how to contact her.
She had previously been a guest at the hotel earlier in the week, Harrold said she was informed by the hotel.
The hotel also told Harrold that an Uber driver found her phone at the end of the day, and she picked it up at the hotel, Harrold said.
The hotel did not answer questions on Sunday about the woman. Arlo, which has two hotels in the city, announces its location in SoHo as a trendy destination with a rooftop bar and views of the Hudson River. Heated cabins on your patio can take guests “out into the country without ever leaving the city,” says the hotel on its website.
In a statement, the hotel apologized to Mr. Harrold and his son. Although the hotel said the manager called the police to report the incident and the hotel’s security intervened, “more could have been done to lessen the dispute.”
“We are deeply discouraged by the recent incident of unfounded accusation, prejudice and aggression against an innocent guest at the Arlo hotel,” said the hotel, adding that it was committed to “ensuring” that it never happens again at any of our hotels. “
Police officers confirmed that they had received a report of an incident at the hotel on Saturday and said they were investigating.
The episode at the hotel came after several recent cases in which racist treatment of black people was captured on video and widely disseminated, including the incident in Central Park in May, which occurred after the black bird watcher asked a white woman for a leash. on your dog.
Harrold, who is from Ferguson, Missouri, moved to New York and started playing jazz professionally at the age of 19. He has performed with top artists like Common, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, Beyoncé and Rihanna, and he appeared on the soundtrack to a biographical jazz film about Miles Davis, “Miles Ahead”, which won a Grammy in 2017 .
Harrold said he had been staying at the Arlo hotel since mid-December. He lives in Long Island City, Queens, but said that a change in the environment helped stimulate his creativity. He said he and his son planned to have brunch when they met the woman at the hotel on Saturday.
He said the woman scratched him as he struggled to keep her away from his son during the fight. He said he is concerned about what would have happened if he had not been there to protect his son.
“I have seen people being injured or even killed for less,” he said.
After the woman grabbed her son, he separated the two, but the woman then disappeared, said Harrold. He hasn’t heard of her, he said.
“She definitely owes my son an apology, for sure,” he said. “I don’t expect that, and if it were to happen, cool. If not, it is much bigger than that. It is a narrative of what should not happen in daily life in America, that’s right. “
He said he was leaving the hotel.