Hotel employees who asked black guest to leave fired

[George II]

Source: CNN

By Keith Allen, CNN

Updated 4:54 PM ET, Sat December 29, 2018

CNN)Two employees seen on video asking a black guest to leave a Portland, Oregon, hotel after he took a phone call in the lobby have been let go, the facility said Saturday on Twitter.

The incident took place December 22 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Portland.

Jermaine Massey was in the hotel lobby when a security guard informed him that police were on their way to escort him off the property.

Massey accused the guard of "harassing" him, and in a statement provided to CNN by his attorneys, characterized the incident as "calling his mother while black."

"We have terminated the employment of the two men involved in the mistreatment of Mr. Massey," the hotel said on Twitter.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/28/us/portland-hotel-police-black-guest-trnd/index.html

---

Good for Doubletree! Idiots like those should go work at one of trump's hotels.

[BigmanPigman]

1. I love to see Instant Karma!

It rarely happens but when it does it is beautiful to see.

[IronLionZion]

2. Good

People who call the cops on people simply for being black are getting some consequences now.

There was a scene like this in the beginning of "Crazy Rich Asians"

[orleans]

9. i love this scene

i never saw it or the movie.
makes me want to see the whole movie now. thanks for posting it

[Cha]

11. IKR!

[GulfCoast66]

16. I don't mean this in a snarky way. But it may seem it.

Do you only expect this in Birmingham or Montgomery or some other southern place?

Racism is not a Southern thing but an American thing. It happens everywhere.

The fact that the south had racism built into its legal system does not mean northerners were less racist. Often times it meant there were less or no people of color to pass laws against.

And if I remember correctly, Oregon was originally intended as a white only state.

But I am glad to see these folks finally paying a price. Nothing will motivate change like economics.

[violetpastille]

26. +1

[GulfCoast66]

34. It truly was not meant as snarky.

I grew up in Louisiana and Arkansas. All my family is southern for hundreds of years.

So when I met my current wife, of over 30 years together, who was from the Midwest and had ancestors who fought on the right side in the civil war, I made certain assumptions. Assumptions that a southerner would have made raised in the 60s and 70s. That northerners would have totally different racial attitudes than many in the South.

Imagine my surprise when not only were some of my Midwestern family members as racist as many in the south, they had no qualms about voicing their beliefs publicly in ways I had never heard here. Her uncle openly used racial slurs in a restaurant. And he is not the only one. I have never heard that here. Of course, unlike in the South, the restaurant was full of only white people.

Too many northerners still see racism as a mainly southern problem. Well, it is an American problem.

If you see me pointing that out as snarky, that’s not on me.

[IronLionZion]

20. Many liberal northern cities have racist histories that are not widely known

since the south got much more attention. Portland has had problems with violence caused by working class white supremacists long before Trump.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

21. The roots of white supremacy run deep; after all, our country was built on it. Oregon has a long

history of running black people out. Don't believe the narratives that towns like to tell about themselves.

https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/exclusion_laws/#.XCjpSfx7lE4

Oregon's racial makeup has been shaped by three black exclusion laws that were in place during much of the region's early history. These laws, all later rescinded, largely succeeded in their aim of discouraging free blacks from settling in Oregon early on, ensuring that Oregon would develop as primarily white.

White emigrants who came to present-day Oregon during the 1840s and 1850s generally opposed slavery, but many also opposed living alongside African Americans. Many were nonslaveholding farmers from Missouri and other border states who had struggled to compete against those who owned slaves. To avoid a similar competitive situation in Oregon, they favored excluding blacks entirely, although a small number did settle in region. A few immigrants brought slaves to Oregon during this time, taking advantage of the lack of enforcement of Oregon's anti-slavery laws.

[UpInArms]

4. The very least that should happen

Am sick to death of the rampant racism that gets a pass in this world

[catbyte]

5. ...

If enough people are shamed and canned for such despicable behavior, maybe potential loudmouths will think twice before spewing their bigotry.

[akraven]

6. Damn, those fired idiots should live up here for one winter.

Bundled up, you can't tell black, white, Athabascan, Eskimo, Haida, Tlinkit, or mutt!

You can, however, tell sled dogs from dachshunds...… the dachshunds are the ones in puppy sweaters.

[littlemissmartypants]

7. Excellent news. eom

[The Wizard]

8. The civil suit should prove entertaining. (NT)

[Cha]

10. They Never Learn! Do they Not See the Stories

of All the Other Racists Getting Fired for the Same SHIT?!

Good to see

[3Hotdogs]

13. No. Fox doesn't show that shit.

[Cha]

15. So the idiot racists all have

to learn the hard way.

What a resume.

[GulfCoast66]

17. Huh. You might have meant that tongue in cheek. But you have a point.

If their only source of news is Fox and sites like FR, well I can see how they expect no blowback.

[gyroscope]

12. The Trump Effect

With Trump in charge closet racists everywhere are coming out of the closet.

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

14. WTF?? From the article: "The officer then escorted Massey back to his room to collect his belongings

and offered him assistance to a different hotel, but he declined, police said. "

Is this COP going to be fired???

Mr. Massey not only has a key card but his possessions are in the room, and still the cop proceeds to evict him - wtf?

[GulfCoast66]

18. Once the hotel ask a police officer to evict someone,

I’m not sure they can refuse.

I rarely defend cops, but a property owner or their legal representative can call the cops to evict someone.

Perhaps there is more info I haven’t seen. I only read the original, somewhat sketchy article about it.

[3Hotdogs]

19. This goes into the weeds ---

Is your hotel room a tenancy lease? They require court orders for eviction.

[obamanut2012]

30. No, any business/private property owner has a legal right to

Trespass anyone, and the cops need to enforce. Except for a tenacy, which hotel rooms absolutely are not.

[Cal Carpenter]

22. It demonstrates that cops exist to serve to protect property

not people.

People need to stop being surprised that cops don't serve 'justice' in the human rights sense. They serve property and its owners. That is their origin, and our legal and economic systems continue to perpetuate this. In fact, in the US in particular police forces developed as a way to catch slaves (ie property) and grew with the need to crush workers movements (ie to protect the owners' property and wealth).

'Officer Friendly' never existed, especially for non-white people.

If we don't recognize the origins of our fucked up institutions, we can never change/improve/dismantle them. And things are only getting worse.

Recommended reading: The End of Policing by Alex Vitale and The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.

[dalton99a]

24. +1. "I complied and cooperated and was not issued a refund for my room"

[xor]

28. How is the officer to determine who is in the right?

Let's say in a different situation a guest was being unruly before the police arrived. Are the police to ignore the requests of the property owner/manager just because they didn't see it? Now, this being a hotel, maybe there are other contract issues that come into play with that. I'm not sure as I am not a lawyer, nor do I spend much time pretending to be one online. But let's say someone is renting a room out on an AirBnB and the guest does something that makes the owner decide to tell them to leave, but they do not. If the police are called, how should they respond in that situation? Should they always side with the guest? If that guest was hostile and he caused harm later on, would police be liable at that point?

Obviously in this case the guy was discriminated against, but how were the officers supposed to determine this with a finite amount of time? The people responsible for this man's treatment are the hotel and the hotel workers. I don't see how cop could be blamed in this situation without our hindsight of the having an investigation and an admittance of fault by the hotel.

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

31. Seriously? If the hotel says he is not a guest, but the guest has a key, AND his ID matches the

the name that the hotel has in its records as the person registered for that room, AND his belongings are already in the room ..... dontcha think that's more than enough proof of who is right in this instance?

Both/and. Hotel AND cops at fault here. Im not sure what your point is in hypothesizing about entirely different situations besides what happened here.

The hotel was attempting to evict him on the basis that he wasnt a guest. Cop could have easily ascertained the truth of the situation.

[xor]

32. Perhaps I am misunderstanding what happened

but I didn't see anywhere in which they said he was not the guest who rented the room, but rather they wrongfully kicked him out and wanted him to be trespassed if he didn't leave. The point of different situations is to determine how these should be handled without the hindsight of the investigation and the hotel admitting fault. If the police have the exact same information, but in a different situation in which the bad actors are reversed, how do they know which is right? A person simply having a key and their stuff in a room doesn't prove they should be there. They might have not checked out when they were supposed to (squatters), they may have caused a disturbance that made the mangers want to kick them out.

From his own posting on instagram, he says they kicked him out after he took some phone calls in the lobby, but that their reasoning for calling the police is still unclear to him. I think it's safe to say there was racism involved there. Perhaps there is new information that is not in any of the articles I read that you can point me to that informed you that they were making claims he was not a guest there. The hotel employees were wrong and they were fired, and I hope he sues the hotel. I'm just having a hard time seeing why the cop is also to blame.

**edit** I just now saw there was more than the first clip. Cop was an asshole, I think. I also see now where the claim of him not having a room came from. I would like to know if the cop made any attempt to once it was confirmed he was a guest and their "concern" was answered. If the cop didn't make any effort to do that, then I agree they should explain why not. I'm also curious that if the officer did attempt rectify this in a way that didn't wrongfully kick the guy out, but was unable to convince the racist security guard to let it go, if the cop was under any legal obligation to trespass him if the security continues to insist so.

[MissMillie]

23. Trump won't hire them... he wants visas for immigrants

so he can pay them rock bottom wages w/ no health insurance.

[dalton99a]

25. It took them a week to apologize.

I hope he files a lawsuit

[padah513]

27. Waiting to see which way the wind was blowing I bet

That or the yelp reviews were killing them.

[Demovictory9]

29. Doubletree was getting hammered on twitter. Folks saying they wouldn't stay in their hotels