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Black Man to Hotel Guard: I'm a Guest. 'Not Anymore'

DoubleTree hotel calls the incident 'unfortunate'
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 29, 2018 4:45 PM CST

Meet Jermaine Massey, who was apparently kicked out of a hotel for making a phone call. "Tonight I was racially profiled and discriminated against for taking a phone call in the lobby of my hotel," he writes on Instagram, per CNN. Massey, 34, has posted videos showing a hotel security guard and later police telling him to leave a DoubleTree hotel in Portland, Oregon, last Saturday. Massey says he was talking to his mother on his phone in the lobby when a white guard, identified only by his "Earl" nameplate, asked him what room he was in. "I said: 'I don't know, I'm having a conversation right now,'" Massey recalls in a video. "'Can you leave me alone right now?'" That's when the guard called Massey a trespasser and warned he was notifying police, per the New York Times.

Massey then began recording videos that show "Earl" telling Massey the cops are coming. Massey mentions that he's a hotel guest, and the guard replies: "Not anymore." Soon a hotel employee tells Massey the guard "wouldn't ask me to call 911 without any cause," and another employee says Massey should calm down. The videos climax with a Portland Police Bureau officer informing Massey that the guard is "in control of the property." Now the hotel says it has "terminated the employment of the two men involved" and plans to investigate further. But Massey—whose lawyers say he was "calling his mother while black"—isn't just letting this slide: "I will be seeking justice," he writes. "Believe that." (A white New Yorker was caught on video telling his neighbor, "You don't live here.")

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