On Saturday afternoon, Keyson Harold, a well-known jazz musician, and his 14-year-old son walked into the lobby of a boutique hotel in Soho, Arlo, where they were accused by a woman they had never seen before. .
The woman falsely accused the teenager of taking her cellphone and demanded that he return it. As the tension escalated, the woman insisted the teenager had a phone, screamed in front of her and eventually confronted her and tried to look into her pocket before parting, Mr Harroll said.
Mr Harold, who is black, captured parts of the altercation in a cellphone video, which was widely shared on social media this week as another example of false allegations against black people. He compares Manny to an incident when a white woman named 911 falsely claimed that a black bird-watcher in Central Park was endangering her life.
Mr Harold said in an interview on Sunday that the Soho episode had “shell-shocked” him.
He said he believes he and his son Keon Harold Jr. may have racial profiles, although he said he doesn’t know the woman’s race.
“I wonder what would have happened if she had been a black woman and there was a 14-year-old white, she would have been different.”
In Mr. Harold’s video, the hotel manager identifying himself and asking his son to make a cellphone can be seen in a clear attempt to verify the woman’s claim. But the manager had no reason to believe the woman, Mr. Harold said.
“They assumed he was guilty,” Mr. Harold said. “Management didn’t even ask her why she would think she had the phone.”
The woman has not been publicly identified. Both police and the hotel declined to share her name, and Mr Harold said she did not know who she was or how to contact him.
She was a guest at the hotel earlier in the week, Mr Harold said he was told by the hotel.
Mr Harold also said an Uber driver found him the next day, and picked him up from the hotel, Mr Harold said.
The hotel did not respond to questions about the woman on Sunday. Arlo, which has two hotels in the city, declares its Soho location as a trendy destination with a roof strip and views of the Hudson River. The hotel says on its website that the warm cabin in its courtyard can “take guests into the country without ever leaving the city.”
In a statement, the hotel apologized to Mr. Harold and his son. While the hotel said the manager called the police to report the incident and stepped up security at the hotel, “something more could have been done to further the controversy.”
“We are deeply disappointed with the recent incident of baseless allegations, prejudice and assault against an innocent guest at the Arlo Hotel,” the hotel said, adding that it is committed to ensuring that this never happens again at any of our hotels. . ”
Police officials confirmed they received a report of an incident at the hotel on Saturday and said they were investigating.
There have been several recent cases in hotel episodes where racist behavior with black people was captured on video and widely circulated, including the Central Park incident in May, when a black bird-watcher told a white woman to bite her dog.
Mr. Herld, J. Ferguson, Mo. No, he moved to New York City and started playing jazz professionally at the age of 19. She has performed with high profile artists like Common, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, Beyonce and Rihanna. And he appeared on the soundtrack for a jazz biopic about Miles Davis, “Miles Ahead,” which won a Grammy Award in 2017.
Mr Harold said they had been staying at the Arlo Hotel since mid-December. He lives in Long Island City, Queens, but said the change in setting helped stimulate his creativity. He said he and his son were facing the woman at the hotel on Saturday when they were thinking of having lunch.
He said the woman scratched him during the fight as she struggled to keep him away from her son. He said he was worried about what would have happened if he had not been there to protect his son.
He said, “I have seen that fewer people have been harmed or killed.
After the woman confronted her son, he separated the two, but the woman disappeared, Mr. Harold said. He said he hadn’t heard from her.
“Surely he apologizes to my son,” he said. “I don’t expect that, and it’s cool if it happens. If it doesn’t, it’s a lot bigger than that. It’s a story about what shouldn’t happen in everyday life in America, that’s it. “
He said he was leaving the hotel.
