This Tweet is from The Washington Post.

A woman called 911 about burglars at her neighhor’s house. They were black Airbnb guests. https://t.co/eGZmbVunsY

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 9, 2018

The article:

A woman called 911 about burglars at her neighbor’s house. They were black Airbnb guests.

They checked out of their Airbnb rental. They loaded their suitcases into the car. Then they found themselves surrounded by police.

Oh no!  Quick, let’s blow this molehill into a mountain of oppression.

Moments before, a neighbor had watched the three black women carry their luggage out of the Rialto, Calif., house. She didn’t recognize the guests as homeowners, so she called the police about a possible residential burglary in progress, police said. Police responded as they typically would to a report of an in-progress burglary, sending six police officers and a helicopter to the scene with the goal of surrounding the house’s perimeter, making it difficult for the criminals to escape, Rialto Police Lt. Dean Hardin told The Washington Post.

A person sees people she didn’t recognize carrying bags of stuff out of a neighbor’s home, gets suspicions, and calls the police.

Sounds like a good neighbor to me.  Wait, it is 2018.  We can’t good neighbors that watch our for each other anymore.  That is what good communities do.  Progressives have to destroy that Leave it to Beaver shit.

The April 30 incident is the latest example of law enforcement summoned by a business or individual to deal with minorities who had simply been going about their day.

RACISM!!!  It has to be racism.  Now we have to hear “Airbnbing while black.”  Will Airbnb have to have people go to bias training?  What are we going to do.

OR…

A woman sees people she didn’t recognize carrying bags of stuff out of a neighbor’s home, gets suspicions, and calls the police is being a good neighbor watching out for the safety of other people in her neighborhood.

Last month, two black men were arrested for trespassing in Philadelphia after a Starbucks employee called police because they hadn’t purchased anything. 

WaPo is going to bring that shit up?  I guess loitering in a private business is perfectly acceptable for black people to do in the name of social justice.

A video of the Rialto incident went viral this week. On Monday, police said in a news release that they were served with notice of a lawsuit on behalf of the guests: Donisha Prendergast, a filmmaker and a granddaughter of Bob Marley; Kelly Fyffe-Marshall, also a filmmaker; and Komi-Oluwa Olafimihan, an artist. The group was visiting Rialto for an event.

Bring on the lawsuits.  I can’t see how this isn’t a waste of money all around.

The Airbnb guests and police tell different stories of what occurred after police arrived at the house on West Loma Vista Drive around 12:36 a.m. But both recorded the encounter. The guests captured it on their phones and subsequently posted the videos to social media. Police say officers wore body cameras, which provided footage that was “accurate and unedited,” and say the department is confident that the officers involved treated the guests with “dignity, respect and professionalism,” according to the news release.

I want to see the video.  I have heard nothing indicating that the women were physically abused.

But Prendergast wrote on Instagram that she and the guests “got surrounded by the police for being black in a white neighborhood.”

Or maybe it was not being recognized by the neighbor while carrying bags out of a house.  That detail isn’t important.  Only race is important.

“I’m sad and irritated to see that fear is still the first place police officers go in their pursuit to serve and protect, to the point that protocol supersedes their ability to have discernment,” she wrote.

It’s called controlling the situation.  It can be abusive sometimes.  Sometimes suspects give a lot of lip.  That’s why I want to see the tape.

Olafimihan wrote on Instagram that “over 700 people that look just like me did not walk away alive from a situation like this last year.”

That isn’t a relevant point, she walked away alive.

Fyffe-Marshall wrote on Instagram that when police arrived, they demanded the guests put their hands in the air and informed them that a helicopter was tracking them.

Sounds like standard police procedure.

“They locked down the neighborhood and had us standing in the street. Why? A neighbour across the street saw 3 black people packing luggage into their car and assumed we were stealing from the house,” she wrote.

Three strangers packing luggage into their car.  People the neighbor did not recognize.  That is the operative part of all of this.  Or are we going to assume that if the neighbor saw three white guys she didn’t recognize carrying stuff out of the house she’d offer to help them?

Fyffe-Marshall wrote that about 20 minutes into the encounter, the misunderstanding escalated “almost instantly.”

“Their Sergeant arrived,” she wrote. “He explained they didn’t know what Airbnb was. He insisted that we were lying about it and said we had to prove it. We showed them the booking confirmations and phoned the landlord.”

  Evidence.  The police wanted evidence.  How terrible that they didn’t take robbery suspects at their word.

“Because they didn’t know what she looked like on the other end to confirm it was her… they detained us,” Fyffe-Marshall wrote, adding that officers investigated the incident as a possible felony for 45 minutes. She added that the neighbor had called the police because the guests had failed to wave at her while loading their luggage into the car.

And they proved they were who they said they were and that they had the right to be there and they were let go.  I can see 45 minutes being a long time but when was the last time you got pulled over.  A speeding ticket takes 30 minutes now days to run a person’s drivers license.

Hardin, the police lieutenant, said that once officers arrived to the house, they “recognized quickly” that there was no burglary in progress. He said officers canceled their request for a helicopter, and spent a total of 22 minutes verifying that the guests were staying at the rental lawfully. 

What did I just say?  The police verified the women’s story and let them go.

“After that, we sent them on their way,” he said. “We felt our officers acted professionally. We thought it was a good outcome for everyone involved. We didn’t detain anyone in handcuffs… we didn’t restrict their movement, they were allowed to walk around. We detained them just enough to figure out if they were lawfully in that house. No force was used.”

Good job.  Sounds like that was handled about as well as those kinds of things can be handled.

Hardin confirmed that the guests were asked to show officers their hands in case they were carrying weapons, and confirmed that one of the officers didn’t know what Airbnb was but was “quickly educated by the officers.” He added that officers learned the residence was an unlicensed Airbnb rental.

Standard police procedure.  Also the “unlicensed Airbnb” part makes me hate Airbnb more than I already do.  

But Rialto police don’t believe the April 30 encounter had anything to do with race.

Sounds like it.

“Unfortunately, when we receive a phone call for something of this type of significance — a burglary in progress — we have to respond,” Hardin said. “As far as the racial aspect, I don’t believe that’s even a factor in this call. We’re responding to what we’re being told. And we will be neglect if we didn’t respond.”

Holy shit!  Cops taking their job to stop a crime in progress seriously.  Broward County take note.

The owner of the Rialto home where the guests stayed, Marie Rodriguez, told the Mercury News she was shocked at how the encounter has been portrayed online.

“They’re making it sound like it’s racially motivated, and it has nothing to do with that,” she said. “It’s all over social media.”

Social justice progressives take a perfectly reasonable, if not slightly unfortunate, story and have to season it to death with racism, identity politics, and oppression.

Had the homeowner simply said to her neighbor “I put my place up on Airbnb, some guests will be staying at my house for a few days.”  The whole thing would have never happened.  A tiny bit of common sense and courtesy and this shit could have been avoided.

Once again the lesson is: Just buy the fucking cup of coffee before asking to take a piss.

Airbnb in the past has faced problems with discrimination, but those concerns typically involved the people renting out their properties. The company in 2016 released a 32-page report on its plans to crack down on discrimination and has worked to service more minority communities.

Airbnb is a San Francisco based tech company.  Leftists for some reason have decided to sink their own companies with social justice.  If Airbnb wants to offend its users and send its revenue down the toilet next to Starbucks, I’m glad I’m not an investor.

“The fact that this neighbor was not a member of the Airbnb community doesn’t change the fact that what happened to our Guests is unconscionable and a reminder of how far we still have to go as a society,” Airbnb spokesman Nick Papas said in a statement to The Post Monday.

“Yeah, fuck that woman just looking our for her neighbor not knowing it was an Airbnb rental.  She’s a racist and this is just another example that America is racist as a whole.”

He said the company has reached out to the guests to express its sympathy and support.

“While we do fundamentally believe in the power of travel to break down historic barriers and have faith in our fellow humans, we will continue to do all we can to make sure our Guests feel like they belong when they travel to different communities around the world,” Papas wrote.

Just fucking tell your neighbor that you put your place up on Airbnb.

Fyffe-Marshall in her post about the incident called it traumatic.

Now she has PTSD along with her Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.  Having the cops called on her and hold her for 22 minutes is like having your arms blown off in Iraq.  I bet she is going to have to go on disability now.  Somebody better set up a GoFundMe so she’ll be able to continue to afford her luxury lifestyle.

“We have been dealing with different emotions and you want to laugh about this but it’s not funny,” she wrote. “I’ve been angry, frustrated and sad. I was later detained at the airport. This is insanity.”

The TSA is in on this god damned conspiracy to oppress these poor women.  This is systematic racism of the highest order.  Never mind that EVERYONE hates the TSA and airport security.  A black woman was detained so the world has to stop rotating on its axis until we get to the bottom of this.

If you think I’m being hyperbolic, I’m not.

https://twitter.com/Marina_Sirtis/status/994201411238817793

See, if Hillary was POTUS, that would would have seen three strange women coming out of her neighbor’s house carrying bags and not called the police because…?

Yeah… it makes no sense to me either.  Then again I’m not a social justice warrior who believes in a Grand Unification Theory of Bigotry where everything in the world is connected trough racism.

If a butterfly flaps its wings in China a cop shoots a black man.

Personally, I hate Airbnb.  I’ve never used it, I won’t use it, I most certainly won’t put my home on it.  Same with Uber and Lyft.  Sorry, but I don’t trust other people.  “Oooo, a stranger downloaded an app and now I’m going to let them into my home or car, I see absolutely no liability in that whatsoever.”  Nope, I value my privacy and security and the want no part of the “sharing economy.”  This case only drives that point home with me.

Ultimately, the danger here is that when stories like this grow legs and travel around the internet destroying reputations it puts a chilling effect on people.

Communities are safe when people in that community work to keep it safe.  When neighbors look out for neighbors that is a sign that a neighborhood is going to be safe, people will want to live there, and the homes will keep their property values.

Put the chill on that and the community will suffer.

“Should I call the police because I see two men carrying a TV out of my neighbor’s house?  I don’t want to get a million death threats on Facebook because of it.  I’ll just keep quiet and hope my neighbor has insurance.”

That is the future.

Kitty Genovese Syndrome is also known as the bystander effect.  When a bunch of people witness a crime but don’t help because each one is sure somebody else will help.

This will blow Kitty Genovese Syndrome out of the water.  A bunch of people will witness a crime but no one will help because they are all afraid of being called “racist” for it.

There is not one good and positive thing in society that these activists will not try and destroy.

You can’t be a good neighbor anymore.  That is racist.