EX-OBAMA AIDE RACIALLY PROFILED BY NEIGHBOR
Ex-Bam aide profiled in building
THE WELCOME wagon was a carload of cops.
Darren Martin, a former Obama White House official who now works for the city, wrote on Twitter that plainclothes cops rushed in and detained him Friday as he was moving into his new Upper West Side apartment in a fifth-floor walkup on W. 106th St., while other officers questioned one of his friends inside the unit.
“Somebody called 5-0 on me . . . I’m in my own building,” he says. “Six of you rolled up on me. What’s the problem?”
“Someone called us,” an officer tells Martin, who livestreamed the encounter and posted it on the internet.
“Somebody in the building or somebody who saw a black man moving his stuff into the building?” Martin replies.
An officer smiles at him in the video, and then asks the dispatcher to restate the reason for the call.
The dispatcher says they got a call of someone trying to open doors on the floor and banging on doors, possibly with a large tool or a weapon.
“Oh, my God,” Martin says on the video.
“So now you know why we’re here,” the cop replies.
Sgt. Jessica McRorie, a police spokeswoman, said cops responded to a call of a burglary. The officers conducted an investigation and determined there was no burglary and no crime was committed.
The whole sequence took 10 minutes, a police source said.
Martin later posted on Twitter it was disappointing that he could be feared, or not wanted, in the building.
At one point, Martin asked one of the cops if he could check on a friend who was helping him move, but the cops would not let him go.
“No matter your bckgrd, this is something Black & brown men — and women — face on a regular basis,” he wrote.
“I gotta say, moving up a 5th floor walk up is tough, but each of those 100 plus steps becomes increasingly grueling with the thought that you’re feared or just not wanted in the building. I guess next time I’ll wear a suit.”
According to his LinkedIn page, Martin currently works as a special assistant to Commissioner Steven Banks of the city’s Department of Social Services.
Previously, he was a legislative aide in Congress. He also was communication director for the Miami-Dade Democratic Party. He has a bachelor of arts degree from Florida International University.
Martin’s Twitter page features
a picture of him posing with then-President Barack Obama in the Oval Office.
Martin said he was upset about the encounter, but knows it could have ended much worse.
He created a hashtag for his social media post. He called it “MovingWhileBlack.”
“Moving” in general — down the street, too fast in a store, into an apartment — can be dangerous,” Martin tweeted. “Profiling could have real consequences.”
Martin’s experience got a lot of reaction on social media.
“The super tolerant people who preach #tolerance don’t want a person of color as their neighbor!!” wrote Oliver South. Some of Martin’s new neighbors put out the welcome mat.
“Welcome to the neighborhood Darren! ???? ” tweeted a woman signed on as Kayleigh D. “I realized when I was reading that article that I live about a 3min walk away from you — small world! Other than this BS I hope the rest of the move went smoothly. Hope we cross paths at some point! ??”
“I live in the neighborhood,” tweeted new neighbor Sasha Koren.
“I just read the story and wanted to counterbalance that horrifyingly awful neighbor who did this to you, if only a bit, by saying you should ARE very welcome and deserve to live unhassled in this area (as everywhere). It has long been diverse.”