YouTube Employee Calls Police On Black Man Waiting For Friend At San Francisco Apartment Building


YouTube Employee Calls Police On Black Man Waiting For Friend At San Francisco Apartment Building

Update 7/9/19 4:28 PM PST: The employee, Christopher Cukor, has since apologized in a Medium post responding to the incident. He acknowledged the fraught history of white people calling the police on black people for trivial reasons, but did not say he was acting out of any sort of racial bias.

“I’m sorry actions caused Welsy to feel unfairly targeted due to his race,” the post reads.

He said that for his “child’s safety, my safety and that of the building, I felt it was necessary to get help in this situation. Furthermore, I’ve encountered trespassers in my building and we’ve been robbed several times. This is not uncommon in San Francisco and the bad actors are all different colors.”

Topline: A white YouTube employee was filmed calling the police on a black man waiting for a friend inside the doorway of an apartment building in San Francisco, the latest viral incident depicting a white person calling the police on a black person for ordinary or inconsequential activities. 

  • The video was recorded and posted on Facebook on the Fourth of July by Wesly Michel, a black software engineer at Dictionary.com, according to his LinkedIn. 
  • In the video, Cukor, asks Michel to dial whoever he is waiting for. When Michel doesn’t, Cukor calls the police and says he is a “trespasser.” Michel’s friend, who he was meeting there, shows up to the building a few minutes later. (Cukor says that Michel entered the building without buzzing in after Cukor opened the door to leave, a practice known as “tailgating”).
  • Meanwhile, Cukor’s young son is crying and pleading for his father not to call the police. “Daddy, I don’t like this, let’s go,” his son says. 

Google, which owns YouTube, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Forbes. Neither Cukor nor Michel immediately responded to Facebook messages from Forbes.

The video originally posted on Facebook has since been viewed more than 1.5 million times. 

The video begins with Cukor asking Michel to dial his friend on the building’s call box. Michel refuses, and Cukor immediately says he’s calling the police.

Michel then tells Cukor he’s recording and that Cukor will be the “next person on TV.” Both men are talking calmly. Cukor’s young son is crying, tell his father, “Daddy, I don’t like this, let’s go.”

“He says he’s waiting for a friend and I asked him to dial the call box and he said he would not, so I have no way of knowing if his friend is actually here,” Cukor tells the police.

Cukor then asks for Michel’s friend’s name.

“I don’t give a f*ck, I don’t have to tell you sh*t,” Michel responds.

Less than a minute later, Michel’s friend walks up to them from outside. 

Context: Cukor’s father was killed by a mentally ill intruder in the driveway of his Berkeley home in 2013, and Cukor said in the Medium post that his father’s murder contributed to his “unique history” approaching the situation.

The Trend: Over the past year, several viral videos of white people calling the police on black people for activities like holding a barbecue in a park, selling water bottles, or swimming in a pool, have spread on social media. The callers in the videos have earned mocking nicknames, become memes—such as “Permit Patty,” “BBQ Becky” and “Pool Patrol Paula”— and were shared as examples of everyday racism black Americans experience. Some of the white callers have lost their jobs . 

Last year in San Francisco, Alison Ettel, who is white, called the police on an eight year old girl who was selling water on the sidewalk without a permit. Ettel eventually resigned from her role as the CEO of a cannabis products company after local dispensaries and distributors stopped carrying her company’s products. “Pool Patrol Paula” was arrested for assaulting a black teenager at a public pool and lost her job as a consultant at a skincare company. 

Key Takeaway: The video highlights the difficulties black engineers face living in the San Francisco Bay Area, home to major tech companies that have made little progress toward goals of diversifying the racial makeup of their workforces, which are still largely white and Asian. Some black techies have said racial bias at work and in the community makes Silicon Valley a worse place to work than other hubs, such as Atlanta and New York.


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