A white woman called 911 after two Black women asked her to return a phone charger. In a viral video posted to Twitter by civil rights attorney Ben Crump, two Black women, Alaina Lambert and Shekeria Thomas, asking a white woman to give back a phone charger. In response, the white woman demands the two women prove that the charger belongs to them.
“For about a minute or so, I was trying to talk to her reasonably,” Thomas told The Daily Beast. “But when she called the police, saying that we were threatening and beating her, I was just in disbelief.”
The two women, who are also TikTok creators, told the outlet they were out riding bikes in a park when the phone charger fell out of Thomas’ bag. The unidentified white woman, they said, immediately picked it up and wouldn’t give it back. “Things escalated quickly,” after that, Thomas said.
In videos of the incident posted to TikTok, the white woman tells 911 the Black women were “touching” and “beating” her. The woman, who social media dubbed “new Central Park Karen,” at one point admits to being racist.
“Are you racist or something,” Lambert and Thomas asked. “Yes, I am,” the woman replies. “I pick my race over any race. What’s your problem?”
Towards the end of one of the videos, all three women are seen approaching officers who are patrolling on horseback. According to The Daily Beast, after the officers speak to all of them, they give the charger back to the Black women. Lambert said she wanted the officers to do more, especially after New York passed legislation last June making false 911 calls based on race illegal after Amy Cooper called police and accused a Black bird watcher, Christian Cooper, of threatening her after he asked her to put her dog on a leash in Central Park.
One of Lambert’s videos of the incident shows an officer saying, “It isn’t legal to make a false police report, but from what that seems, it seems like she didn’t make a report, that the cops immediately knew that she was just, y’know, not all there.”
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